Obsidian
by Polly Lynn
Summary: Post-Always. Once a one-shot, then a WIP. Now complete. "It's childish. She knows it's childish, but somehow she'd thought they were done being angry. That the last of it had been washed away in the storm and everything that followed. . . . It's so much harder than she thought it would be. All of it."
1. Chapter 1

Title: Obsidian

Rating: M (language, smut)

Spoilers: Set early season 5, but no spoilers for anything beyond Always.

A/N: What can I tell you? They wanted to have angry sex.

* * *

You should see yourself  
Contorting into shapes to try and re-explain yourself  
We would all just laugh  
If it wasn't such a shame  
This time it's a matter of life and death

Come on now, Obsidian

Soften your skin

Let the change begin

-Steve Dawson, "Obsidian"

* * *

Everything about this is harder than she thought it would be. That's how she feels when she's all out of fairness and the ability to see both sides. When she's giving the middle finger to the Dr. Burke in her head, who says things like _Life is small moments, Kate. Life is work. _Right now, she is all out of fairness and her mental middle finger is standing proud.

What makes her angriest is that she misses him. She misses the mundane annoyances: The way he taps his pen, his fingers, whatever's available when his mind is writing in the background. And she misses the day-to-day things that make him . . . convenient to have around: Warm, solid calves, shoulders, hips, back. All of him to press her cold morning self into. Toes. The tip of her nose when it goes blue in the arctic blast of the loft. Because it's mid-October and he still insists on cranking up the A/C and burrowing under blankets.

She misses the pieces of her that he keeps with him wherever he goes. And the things she didn't know she wanted (_needed_) until he gave them to her.

She is lonely without him and it's hard not to hate him for it, because she has never been lonely in her adult life.

It's not just the _fact_ of missing him that makes her angry, but its scope. She misses him comprehensively. The longing is ubiquitous. All encompassing. Even her vocabulary for it is stitched together from the kinds of words he loves. Strange words that used to live for her only on the page. In whispers so infrequent that the words never lost their exotic bite. Now they breathe them into one another. In passion. In fun. In anger.

He is annoyingly articulate. More so when he _is_ angry, and how is that fair?

It's childish. She _knows_ it's childish, but somehow she'd thought they were done being angry. That the last of it had been washed away in the storm and everything that followed. She still feels her eyes go wide when it happens. She snaps at him. He snaps back. One of them storms away. Big or small. Over in a minute or stretching across days, it shocks her every time, the hard reality that there can be anger between them. That there _is_ anger between them.

It's _so_ much harder than she thought it would be. All of it.

And he thinks it was easy for her. Showing up on his doorstep. Soaking wet, hobbling, and barely able to breathe through a mosaic of bruises. Talking her way past an understandably alarmed Eduardo when he wouldn't pick up the damned phone. He thinks that was _easy_.

A least she _thinks_ he thinks that. That's how it seems, when she's like this: Angry and alone and not ok and hating him for stealing her self-sufficiency right out from under her. When her mind shouts loud enough to drown out Burke's maddeningly sensible advice: _W__ork, Kate. Showing up, putting in the time. Grand gestures can only take you so far. _

When she's not like this—when she can be still inside—she knows he doesn't think it was easy.

She knows, because he can't forget the bruises. She can tell by the way he keeps his hands careful. The way he reaches for her and draws back. Hesitates, then brushes and slides when his instinct is to drag, pull, knead, tease, mark. She can tell by the sorrow, the apology he never quite whispers. By the way he never quite asks if he hurt her when he _does_ forget and instinct washes over them both for a while.

She can tell by the nightmares. He never wakes from them. Never comes out of it to feel her lips seeking out the tears on his cheeks. Never hears her say his name, her name, over and over, tumbling together with reassurances until he's quieter. He never wakes. She always does. She hopes she always does, whether he hears her or not.

* * *

She's never used her key before. Never let herself in when he knows she's coming over. Never stepped around him to save him the trouble of juggling grocery bags and digging in his pockets for his own set. Certainly never slipped into the darkened loft when he's three time zones away.

He'd given it to her a month to the day after the storm. Just slipped it on to her key ring without comment. She hadn't given any indication that she'd noticed. She hadn't told him that it made her heart pound and her stomach drop away and climb back up again. That she'd been waiting for it, hoping for it, _and_ that she thought it might be too soon. That maybe he should take it back. She hadn't said anything at all.

And now it's sticking in the lock and it won't turn either way and she is all out of half-apologetic smiles for the neighbors, every last goddamned one of whom _would_ be coming or going at this exact moment, even though it's after 1 AM. She gives a last vicious tug and the key slips free.

She stumbles back far enough that her elbow slams into the wall behind her. Her arm whites out for a moment with the impact to her ulnar nerve, then lights up like Times Square. She is less than two seconds away from kicking the fucking door in when yet another neighbor pops out of the elevator.

Of course it's the one she hates: A well-preserved silvery blonde fifty-something broker who made enough during the dot com boom to retire at 40. She spent a decade shopping and now she's _done _shopping. Now she dabbles. Is thinking of writing a memoir or maybe a crime novel. Or becoming a chef.

"Kate!" The woman is actually advancing on her with open arms and the apparent expectation of air kisses.

"Mariel." Beckett brings her arm up in an awkward wave that doubles as a block.

It's overtly rude, but Mariel is unfazed. "Why, I thought Rick was out of town until Thursday at least?"

"He is." She's not about to elaborate.

Mariel's superficial grin is starting to look a little the worse for wear. "Oh, ok. Well, I watered the plants yesterday evening, so they should be good until tomorrow at least."

She watered the plants. Castle had _asked her_ to water the plants. Oh.

"Thank you," Kate blurts as soon as she realizes that it's her turn to say something.

"Of course," she says brightly, then adds with a slightly puzzled look. "So, you'll let me know if I need to stop by again before Thursday? Just . . . you know . . . slip a note under my door or leave a message with Eduardo. Unless you're going to take care of it?"

"Sure. Will do. Take care of it, I mean."

She waits two beats after the door closes behind Mariel before she is back working at the lock. Embarrassment is sizzling over her skin and she _has_ to get out of this hallway.

She gentles the key out of the lock a fraction of an inch and twists. It goes a quarter of the way around and sticks again, hard enough to grind the bones of her wrist together unpleasantly.

"Fuck," she hisses. Her forehead makes contact with the door harder than she meant it to.

She goes rigid when she feels tears gathering at the corners of her eyes and that is just _it. _She jerks at the key again and of course—_of course_—it makes a full turn and the door swings open.

* * *

She's perched on a stool in the kitchen. Spine straight, fingers hinged over the lip of the counter. It's a compromise. It's ridiculous. Worst of all, it's working.

She feels more like herself than she has since he had dropped his bag on the curb and come back to her. Peeled her fingers away from her ribs to step close and slide rough fingers around the base of her skull. To kiss her hard. _"I love you, Kate. I'll call."_

She hadn't said anything, just watched him pick up his bag again and slide into the back seat of the car. He hadn't looked back.

He'd called. Of course he'd called. She hadn't answered. Not the first time. Not the second.

She answered the third time. It was a disaster.

* * *

_Her terse hello. _

_A long pause and then his voice, wary and not altogether friendly. "Kate. You answered." _

_Not a lot to go on. "Yeah." _

_Another pause. "Ok." _

_He can't think he's going to win this. Grudges and monosyllables are her territory. _

_He breaks 10 seconds later and it's _awful. _His voice is bright and social and meant to be charming._

_She cuts into a story he's telling. Derails whatever this is. "I know. You said." _

"_What?" He abruptly sounds exhausted. _

"_About the studio guy and Paula. You told me." _

"_So you at least listened to the messages." His voice is flat. Not angry. Not relieved. _

"_I listened to the messages." She wonders what her voice sounds like to him. _

_There's another pause. Voices in the background and the harsh scrape of his hand covering the speaker. Syllables bleed through his fingers, muffled but sharp. Angry. _Now _he sounds angry. _

"_And I'm taking 5 fucking minutes." She hears that part clearly as his hand slides away from the speaker. _

"_Beckett?" _

_She wonders how he does that. Turns everything around in the space of a breath. It's an apology and a plea and an explanation. A promise. _

"_I'm here." Her voice is small. "You have to go." _

"_No. Not right . . ." He lets out a frustrated sigh. "Three hours. I know it's late there, but I can't get out of this. If I call in three hours, will you pick up?" _

"_Yeah." She's coming apart and she needs to get off the phone now. "Yeah, I'll pick up." _

"_Ok," he breathes. _

_She knows exactly the expression on his face right now. The downward slant of his head. The way his eyes go wide, then drift closed. _

"_I love you, Castle." The words run into each other, but she has to say it first this time. It's important, though she's not sure why. _

_Important or not, she's burning up with embarrassment and she can't even wait for him to say it back, though she needs it more than air right now. _

"_Three hours," she says and ends the call._

* * *

The marble countertop is cool and slick under her cheek. It's also wet with what can only be her own drool. _Ugh_. She tries to lift her head and everything from the waist up protests loudly.

How could she have fallen asleep? After days of fitful tossing and turning in her own bed. After sullenly ignoring half a dozen sunrises from the couch, eyes skipping over the same page of text for the tenth time, how could she _possibly_ have fallen asleep in his kitchen?

The next thought slams into her. Snaps her upright and jerks the stiffness from her muscles. What woke her up?

And there it is again: A key in the door.

She's off the stool and covering the distance to the door in angry strides. If it is that fucking neighbor about the goddamned plants, she is not above asking Lanie to help her hide a body.

She stops dead when she hears something else. Something else again. Realizes now that this is what really woke her up: Her own name on the other side of the door. Low and urgent and half lost in the sounds of clumsy movements.

"Kate, I know . . ."

The door swings open and she winces against the light tipping in from the hallway.

"Kate." He's still holding the phone to his ear.

She's in the exact middle of the loft, as far from cover as it is possible to be and every joint in her body is locked up tight. If her life depends on her moving, this is how she'll die.

Three sharp noises ring out in rapid succession. His phone clatters to the hall table. His bag hits the floor with the unmistakable sound of something inside breaking. The door slams behind him with the kind of finality she's heard once before.

He's forgotten about the bruises. He's tugging her head back. Bending her spine and towering over her. His teeth land on the sharp ridge of her shoulder and she thinks he might've broken the skin.

It galvanizes her. She hooks her fingertips over the tops of his shoulder blades and retaliates. Opens her mouth and pushes a series of curses past her lips. Presses them into his skin with her own teeth.

He answers in kind. Profanity and prayer wrapped around her name.

It weaves a spell around her. His words always do. All her blood feels like it's rushing to the surface to greet his skin and there's nothing to keep her upright. She's leaning so heavily against his arm around her waist that he might as well be carrying her.

He is carrying her now. Practically carrying her, though the tips of her toes occasionally touch down on the floor. It's urgent and entirely ungraceful.

The sharp edge of the console table scrapes at the backs of her thighs as he hauls her up on to it. Something to her left topples and crashes to the floor as they both struggle to free her arms from her sleeves.

He gives up. Jerks her bra strap down her shoulder and pulls her head back again. Arches her breast up into his waiting mouth.

"_God_, Castle." The words are all but lost on her sharp inhale as the other strap joins the first and thank the gods and little fishes that the idiot remembered how to work a bra clasp. Then it's all burning chaos. Teeth and tongue and fingers working without rhythm until she's weightless and disoriented and her own hands are casting about, trying to find purchase somewhere on his body.

"_Fuck,_ Beckett!" He moans. His head is suddenly heavy against her neck and his fingers are opening and closing around her shoulders.

For a second, she can't figure out what she's done to deserve the sudden, terrible absence of his hands and mouth anywhere interesting.

Then her mind catches up with her body. His belt is wrapped around her left palm. At some point she seems to have hooked her ankles around the backs of his thighs. Her right hand is slipping past his half-open fly with some difficulty. There's so little space between their bodies that it's kind of a win–win.

She lifts her hips and her mouth falls open. He repeats his curse. Her name. Adds some colorful adjectives and a threat or two.

She drops the belt and her hand snakes up to the back of his neck. She yanks on a fistful of hair. She notes in a detached sort of way that he needs a hair cut.

"Let me down," she hisses as she disentangles their legs.

"No." He tugs fiercely on her earlobe with his teeth. "No."

"Castle, I need to take off my fucking pants _now. _Let me down or I will _end_ you." She's impressed with herself. It's the longest sentence she's uttered in a week, and given that her tongue wants nothing more than to remind her how his inner thighs taste, she thinks they're handling the dialogue pretty well.

He seems to think so, too. He steps back from her with a stunned look on his face, his hands raised in surrender.

_Good, _she thinks. And then, _Oh, when did he lose his shirt? That's a time saver_.

Her feet hit the floor and the rest of her almost follows. He catches her hips and looks so damned satisfied with himself that she can't help it. Her hand shoots out and tweaks his nipple. Hard.

"Ow! _OW!_"His self-satisfied smile dies half-born and he slaps her hands away from the waistband of her jeans. He yanks at them and drops to his knees, following as he peels the tight fabric away from her skin. Takes her underwear along for the ride.

By unspoken agreement, she arches her hips up and back, planting herself on the table again. He pulls the jeans free of her dangling feet and pitches them away. His mouth lands on her hip and travels low across her belly, sucking and scraping.

His eyes flick upward and he almost laughs. Her face is white with the effort of trying not to squirm and it's all for nothing. She's vibrating from head to toe. She gives it up when he touches his tongue between her legs and stops.

"_Castle_." Her head falls back and stretches his name out into a long moan that takes forever to escape entirely from her throat. She spreads her thighs, presses her hips toward him.

She's moving so wildly now that, honestly, it doesn't leave him much to do but slip his fingers behind her knees and hold on until she's rigid and still and far from silent for a long, long moment.

If he'd thought an orgasm would take the edge off the furious energy driving them both, he was wrong. She's rubber limbed and panting and this interferes not at all with her ability to haul him up her body and keep him upright while she finishes the job she started on his pants.

He kicks his way free of them and catches her under the arms before she can follow through on her plans for payback. She lets her knees go. Makes herself dead weight. When that doesn't work, she struggles. He stills her. Wraps her in a bear hug and side steps her away from the table and against the back of the couch.

"No," he growls in her ear. "Beckett, stop."

Whatever sounds she's making, they're not words. They _are_ however, unmistakably furious and fuck if he isn't confused as usual. She's twisting against him. Struggling with feeling, but there's no question she could get away from him if she really wanted to and they both know it. _So what the actual fuck? _

The thought is barely formed when suddenly it's mission accomplished for Beckett. She slams one hip into his. He rocks back just enough for her to do a 180 and . . . _Oh. _

She plants her hands flat on the back of the couch sets her feet a little wider. He falls over her and every inch of her skin against his chest is like a gift. He grabs her wrists and slams into her and he doesn't know which of them is screaming. Whoever it is, she has a filthy mouth and she's pretty into this.

Not that he isn't. He's a little _too _into it, in fact, and it's over for him in an embarrassingly short amount of time. He's just on the verge of a broken, breathless apology when she reverses his hold. She grabs one wrist and shoves his hand between her legs. He stands her up against him while she, once again, does most of the work. His free hand skims its way up her chest and skips from nipple to nipple. Never let it be said he makes no contribution to the effort.

If she has any complaints on that front, they're lost in a continuing stream of profanity and his name and, not too long after, a wordless howl. She half turns into him and slithers to something like a sitting position against the back of the couch.

He cradles her head against his chest and leans down to kiss her. Guilt flares bright and sick-making in him as he realizes it's the first time he's kissed her since he walked in the door.

She feels him tense and panics.

"Couch. No talking." She pushes her way free of him. Tugs him along by the hand as she steps around to the front of the couch.

She stops short. Frowns down at the single blanket. The leather is cold and the air in the loft is freezing because he won't even turn down the goddamned air conditioning when no one is there.

He sees the goosebumps crawling over her shoulders and realizes he's freezing, too. He dips his chin to her shoulder and whispers in her ear, "Bed, Kate."

"No," she shouts and whirls around to face him. "I'm _pissed _at you."

He opens his mouth and he's not sure whether he's going to laugh or cry. It turns out to be a sigh and he thinks that's probably best for his long-term survival. "Yeah, Beckett, I'm pissed at you, too."

She gapes at him. "What the hell are you pissed at _me _for?"

He laughs this time. There's really nothing for it. He laughs. "Would you like a numbered list? A series of haikus? A dozen villanelles end to end?"

She thinks about hitting him, but Burke would probably have a _lot_ to say about solving her relationship problems with violence and she doesn't need the hassle. Unfortunately the alternative to violence seems to be tearing up.

"Jesus, Kate." He has her wrapped up again, and if he's not crying he's close. "Please. Please just come to bed. I love you and I am angry and I am so fucking exhausted that I just can't do this right now."

"How did you even get here?" She asks suddenly.

He doesn't miss a beat. "Wormhole."

She huffs a laugh into the hollow of his throat. "Jerk."

"That I am," he agrees. "Pissed Paula off royally by spending most of the event getting myself on the next flight out of LA and finding a driver willing to break land speed records to get me to the airport in time."

They stand there in the dark for a moment, wrapped around each other. She's shivering and he's about to take another stab at coaxing her between his sheets—from purely altruistic motives for once—when she speaks. "Just give me number one, Castle. And then we can go to bed."

He hesitates. Not because he's unsure. He's so sure that the prospect of giving voice to it frightens him. But she'll know if he lies and what happens then frightens him even more.

"Number one." He rests his forehead against her temple and whispers, "You hold your breath like you're waiting for us to fail."


	2. Chapter 2

Title: Obsidian, Ch. 2

Rating: M

Spoilers: None, really, though it's set in early Season 5, which I know almost nothing about. (I'm hardcore spoiler free.)

A/N: So, I really meant for Obsidian to be a one-shot. Apparently some readers/reviewers disagreed rather forcefully. (For which, thank you; any reviews are encouraging and wonderful support. Reviews asking for more are an especially nice compliment.) And then Castle started talking in my head. And talking. And talking.

Fair warning: This chapter covers the same territory as what is now Chapter 1, and it ends up in the same place. I promise there will be at least one more chapter after this, too.

* * *

He's not used to doing the work. Maybe he never was. Maybe that explains a lot. Two ex-wives and the one that got away because he missed the subtext. Decided to miss the subtext. It might explain a lot.

A lot, but not all of it. Because he _is _doing the work. He's thinking about structure and boundaries and give and take. About the way to make the days and nights and weeks work with a woman who doesn't _have _to love him. With Kate.

He's used to sharing his life. With Alexis. With his mother, even before she landed on his doorstep with nothing but a tale of woe and the clothes on her back. With the people who move the pieces of his career around the board. Who happen to be women, too. Business relationships with benefits, once upon a time, but does that matter? It might, but probably not the way he thought it would.

Of all the things that trip her trigger wire, jealousy isn't one of them. Not now. It's staggering when he thinks how often the green-eyed monster was the _only_ thing that gave him any hope at all. But now she radiates this steely certainty. Like she knows that he doesn't have any choice in the matter. And he doesn't. He _so_ doesn't.

When things are good between them, it's a complete turn-on. That confidence and the wicked, amused look she gives him. The one that says she doesn't have to bother being possessive. That he is hers and that's that.

When things are bad, it feels like she can take it or leave it. Him and them and the rest of their lives. And from bad to worse, together they go.

* * *

Everyone has something to say about what he's doing wrong, whether he asks or not. His mother, of course. And Lanie (also of course). Alexis. Even Jenny by way of Ryan. At least he insists the advice is Jenny's.

Castle has a fantasy. The six of them, tipsy and happy around a table at the Old Haunt and Castle outs Ryan as the closet Delilah fan he is. But there's a lot more broken in that scenario than he can fix.

If she can't need him, he wishes she could need _them. _Her family. But she's excised herself from the picture with razor precision. Not like a year ago when she ebbed away from everyone (_everyone but him_), gradual as an ache.

Now she sees them all. One at a time. Careful as clockwork, she blocks it out at regular intervals to show them that she's fine. He's fine. They're fine together and life is good. No one believes it for a second.

But those are the kinds of words she won't let in edgewise. The kinds of words that have her hanging up, settling the check, saying she can't believe how the time got away from them and they have to do this again soon.

They all expect him to do something about it. About her. This bright, superficial, trying-too-hard version of her. And he wants to tell them.

He wants to tell them how she showed up in the rain, bruised and torn and blazing bright with certainty. How she put her hands on him and asked him to be certain with her.

But it's too much and not enough at once. A story that fights and claws its way up and up, then settles back. A quiet weight that tugs them back to one another. Sends them burrowing into one another's hollow places in sorrow, in contrition, in need. It's not for sharing.

He wants to yell in their faces that he's trying. That he's doing the work. Wants to ask them if they seriously think he doesn't see how badly he's failing so much of the time. If they think he doesn't see how she's bracing for impact.

He wants to defend . . . not just himself, but _them. _Wants to paint them all a picture with lush, vibrant, electrified words. A picture of how good it can be. How she has this capacity for joy that they can't possibly imagine. That even he had never imagined it.

But he doesn't tell them. He doesn't tell them that sometimes she _is _fine. And sometimes, though not lately, they are much, much better than fine.

He doesn't tell them. For good reasons and bad.

Because she's a deeply private person by nature. She is more than trauma and scars. If she hasn't shown them that joy—that side of her—it's her choice. She can and she will if and when she wants to. It'll keep.

Because he's a miser with it. With that version of her. With the well-kept secret that Kate Beckett wants to be happy. That she is happy with him.

She _is_ happy with him. Except when she's not.

When she's not—when that feels like most of the time—he picks over those diamond-bright moments of goodness. Of joy he has given and been given. Gladness and peace and contentment she has given and received. That they've made together. And he's proud of his hoard. And greedy for moments to add.

He's working on it. They're working on it. And he would like a little fucking credit for both of them.

* * *

Lanie thinks the answer is space. She's been banging that particular drum since early on. There are days when he'd happily smash it over her head.

For example, the occasion of her first unsolicited lecture on the topic.

He'd waited a month. A month, he thought, was a perfectly respectable interval. And he hadn't made a big deal of it. Just slipped the key on her ring. A gesture to say "I want you here when you want to be here and then some." A promise that he was done with secrets and any time she came through his door there'd be nothing he didn't want her to see. Nothing he was holding back from her. Nothing he was keeping from her.

And 12 hours later, a warning from Lanie. Not to crowd her. Not to hover. Not to swallow her whole. He had writhed and suffered for a day and a half. Come around to anger because, _Really Beckett are we fucking 12 and passing notes in study hall?_

But he'd had it all wrong: Just a coincidence. A helpful tip out of the blue, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood ME and BFF. An answer without a question. A proffered solution to a problem he hadn't known he had.

A day and and a half. Then he asked Lanie outright. What had Kate said and why the hell hadn't she said it to him?

But Beckett hadn't said a word to her. A word to anyone. A word to him.

And she didn't use the key. Ever. But she didn't give it back either. And it seemed like enough. It _was _enough at the time.

Five months on, staring into the abyss of a well-stocked minibar, he thinks she could commit to water the fucking houseplants if she can't commit to him.

* * *

She is brave. He has to remind himself of that, more and more. Has to remind himself that brave and fearless are not the same things. That brave is more important. That fearlessness and foolishness keep close company.

Still. He could be her fool for a good long while. And he wishes and wishes and wishes that she could be his. Not because it's easier. Not because fear means work. Because fearlessness comes from the kind of innocence he wants to give her.

He does give it to her, but he'll never tell her that. He gives it to her in the happy endings and might-have-beens he writes. That he's written all along. Every time he showed up to the page to empty his mind and his heart spilled over instead. He's written a dozen stories of her life. A hundred. Kinder stories in which he sees her, gives her life and motion and sure, steady trajectory. He gives her his words, that fearless Kate, and she rushes in, reckless and fierce. The Kate with unclouded eyes.

He still writes them when the longing takes him. The longing to give her more—to be more for her than she wants or needs or will ask for. When it fills him up and spills over and he doesn't want to scare her away with it, he writes a kinder story for her. For them.

He's not asking for a commitment. Not really. Ok, he _wants _to ask for a commitment. He wants to empty her apartment and build it up again inside his own walls. The two of them, safe as houses. Or he wants to burn both their places to the ground and start everything fresh and new and together. He wants to be her forever and have her babies and buy her the moon.

He has wanted all that since about five seconds after the door closed behind her the night of the storm. Because he is Martha Rodgers' son and stubborn, idiotic fearlessness is his birthright.

Because he _is_ fearless about them. And that doesn't feel like foolishness. It feels rock-solid and sure, even in the angry moments. The lonely moments. The moments when he has to remind himself that she is brave. That this—being together—takes a different kind of bravery than he thinks she'd been counting on.

That she's working on it, too. That she's not always looking for the exits. Not always waiting to fall. Not always.

* * *

He waits two days. A day and a half, but it's the _second _day now and he's giving himself credit. Rounding up. The first night didn't count. It was just a text. Just common fucking courtesy to say he'd gotten there safely. That his plane hadn't exploded over the Rockies. That he hadn't been shot by a crazed sniper on the 405. That she didn't have to worry about the worst "and then you'll be sorry" scenarios coming to pass.

Her response: _Ok. _So she must not have been too worried.

He doesn't mean to call her that second day. He means to have exactly two scotches, spend 25 minutes between the stiff hotel linens confirming that there is no hope that he will ever sleep again, and get up to write pages and pages that no one but he will ever see. That's the plan.

But then Leo slides a martini glass his way, wordless and sympathetic. Smoky violet liquid sloshes on his fingers. The cloying scent of the gardenia petal floating on top almost chokes him. He takes a sip anyway, and it's so bad it's almost good. He takes another sip and pulls the leather drink menu toward him.

Another sip as he scans, searches for a clue. He finds what he's looking for and he _does_ choke then. Waves off an alarmed Leo and bites back the laughter, because he must look like a sad case, and it was a nice gesture, but Jesus, that's funny: The Black Dahlia.

The phone is ringing before he even realizes it's in his hand. That he's already dialed. That it's halfway to dumping to her voicemail and she's not going to answer.

But he holds on to it, the moment of levity. Pictures her there with him, bumping him with her shoulder and biting back her own laugh. Listening to his melodramatic reading of the bad copy underneath the ingredient list, an implausible story making the sensational most of the fact that the famous murder victim might've spent her last living hours in this very bar.

He gets a little lost in the wishful thinking and almost misses the beep. He jumps in without preamble.

_"I am sipping a truly fascinating drink. The Black Dahlia: An unlikely and, frankly, inadvisable mixture of Chambord, Kahlua, and I'm pretty sure the pressed gardenia sweepings are from the actual summer of 1947. And if that doesn't make you want to wet your whistle, the potboiler menu text is accompanied by extremely blurry, yet not quite blurry enough, crime scene photos. Wish you were here. We'd totally crack this cold case and make our fortune."_

It's out before he realizes it. He pulls the phone from his ear and looks at it like it bit him. Has a preadolescent fantasy about transforming himself into pure energy, zipping through the line after the message. Chasing it down, scooping it up and shoving it back in his stupid mouth.

The seconds on the call timer tick over and over and he's going to run out of them. And he certainly can't leave it like that. _"I wish you were here, Kate. I love you."_

* * *

She doesn't call back. He doesn't expect her to.

He fucked up. It's not a revelation courtesy of a continent between them, even though that we supposed to be the point. Part of the point, anyway. Time and space and shelter for this fragile thing they're working on. It's not even a realization or sudden understanding. It's certain knowledge. Has been from the minute he said yes to Ryan. Certain knowledge every minute from then on. Every minute he didn't mention it.

He fucked up and he's not blaming her. He doesn't need his mother's heavy stare, her pointed comments and weighted pauses. Her short-fused reminders about where this particular garden path leads. He knows the bad habit is all his. He wasn't _hiding _it, but . . .

It started with the key. It kind of started with the key.

He'd spent the first couple of weeks learning not to talk. Reacquainting himself with his inside-his-head voice. He's used to sharing his life. Sort of. But really, _they're_ used to sharing his life with _him_—his mother, Alexis, Gina, Paula. They tune him out. Ignore his first-draft observations for their own sanity and his continued bodily integrity.

If Kate thought she was used to it, his constant stream of words, she really had no idea. She found it charming at first, though she'd never say _that_ out loud. Not Kate. She had glowered and grumbled and rolled her eyes. Teased him mercilessly and talked back. And all the while, she'd covered his clothes, his skin with impromptu kisses and stuttering breaths. Soft exhalations of his name.

Because she loves his words. She's loved his words for a lot longer than she's loved him. And if that's the thing she has no choice about—if that's what she _has_ to love the way he _has_ to love her—he'll take it. He'll take it.

But even that early, he was learning to be quiet. Quieter. Aware that she was listening. Turning his phrases over in her own mind. Making him want to pull them back because he wasn't _finished_ yet and he can do better. And that's mostly his issue. That pathological attachment to privacy that he hasn't had to confront in years because his space has been so completely his own.

He was quiet about the key and he told himself it was the same kind of thing. That it was the _right_ thing. That grown-ups who were good at relationships didn't have to talk everything to death.

He was quiet about the business trips. Scheduled the perfunctory battles with Gina and Paula for when Kate was out. _No, he was _not _leaving town. No, he _wouldn't_ reschedule right now. Yes, they _were_ going to take care of it. _

He told himself it was no different from all the other times that he'd put his foot down. That he'd figured out years ago that Paula would _always _want a piece of him. Would always think he should be putting himself out there more, controlling and spinning and working his image. He'd figured it out, and since then, everyone was used to him being the immovable object. When Alexis needed him. When she might have needed him. When it seemed like she was growing up so fast he couldn't bear to lose a minute.

Freedom. That's what he'd bought for himself and his family and he would just keep on buying it now. For her. For them. Because she is his family now, too, whether or not she knows it. Whether or not she'll have him for hers.

He told himself it wasn't that he was _afraid_ to be away from her, he just didn't _want_ to be away from her. That he would ask her to come with him someday, and she'd say yes or she'd say no and it would be fine. But for now, he would be quiet and just do this for them.

He told himself that it had nothing to do with worrying about her. Nothing to do with her being at such loose ends. With him worrying that she might resent it. Resent him.

By the time Ryan called, it was too easy to keep quiet. To tell himself that he was just following her lead. That everything in his life wasn't about her, any more than everything in her life was about him. That he and Ryan are friends and it's childish to think she'd be jealous or threatened or even interested.

It was just a phone call. Ryan needed an introduction and he could make it happen. The phone call became a meeting. He hadn't meant to get shot at. He hadn't really even _been_ shot at. He'd just been . . . shot near. Ryan had handled it and it was over in 2 minutes. The stitches—just 5 and only then because it was a scalp laceration that had bled like a Tarantino film—had been his own clumsiness. Ducking for cover, he'd caught the sharp edge of the newspaper box right above his hairline.

But whatever his intentions, he'd fucked up. And that was the end of the quiet.

* * *

_His mother must have called her. Or maybe Ryan? He has no idea how she's gotten there so fast, but they haven't even cleaned him up yet. He feels the unpleasant tug of dried blood caking the left side of his forehead, and his collar is still wet with it. _

_He startles at the sudden clatter of curtain rings. Opens his mouth to say something inane. Then he sees her face: Absolutely desolate and drained of color. But angry, too. So angry._

_It pulls him down, down. Everything at once: The guilt and fear of a little boy who knows he's been caught mixes with stark, solid grief. Mixes with sorrow for the wild hurt in her eyes and a different kind of fear at knowing he put it there. Perverse, wrong-headed relief at the realization that he _can _put it there. _

_It's the first moment he believes—really believes—that she loves him. And, oh,_ God,_ it scares him. _

_He half rises to meet her, but she knocks him back into the hard plastic chair. Presses down on his shoulders and looms over him. He is trying to be careful. Trying not to get blood all over her, but she's relentless, clutching at his jaw, his neck, the back of his head. He gives up and winds his arms around her waist. Presses his face against her hip and holds on. _

_He's never heard her utter so many words at once. Curses and pleas for reassurance. He doesn't know what kind of nonsense he's muttering back. _

_He doesn't know how it starts, but there they are. Fighting in hushed, vicious undertones in a fucking ER cubicle. And neither of them can seem to stop. All the things they've been so carefully not saying come out. Accusations and retaliations made all the more terrible by the fact that they can't yell. It lends a terrible weight. Fierce, ugly whispers and false civility. _

_There are wrenching dead halts when someone whisks aside the curtain. A tetanus shot. A fresh pad to tape down tight, because the blood is still coming in lazy, determined rivulets. The umpteenth reassurance that it'll just be a few more minutes._

_They start again and again and each time he thinks it can't possibly get any worse. It does._

_And then all the fight goes out of her in an instant. He can't even remember what he'd just said. What she'd just said. But her voice is so small when she lets him go. She balls her fists at her sides and says, "I don't know how to do this."_

_The doctor barges in to sew him up. She doesn't stay._

* * *

He makes it two more days before he storms out of pre-dinner drinks with a promising young screenwriter. He's a hot property and Paula wants him badly for the third Nikki Heat screenplay. He has a close-cropped buzz cut, elaborate facial hair, and glasses with thick black rims. Castle hates him immediately.

He goes on and on about audiences expecting Nikki to be softer, more approachable by the third movie. About the implausibility of Heat and Rook continuing to circle one another from such a distance. He thinks it's time for a wedding or at least a proposal.

Paula nods eagerly over her mineral water and adds to the wish list: She wants to strip Nikki down. Take everything from her. Maybe kill off Raley? Something to make her vulnerable. Something to be the driving force behind her making a real move in her personal life. Says the slow burn is fine for novels, but no one buys it in real life.

Castle lasts 20 minutes before verbally eviscerating the writer, insulting Paula, and making his exit.

He's striding along the copper-bright LA street. He draws stares and cat calls from the slow, undulating stream of cars. He loses himself among the ranks of the drunk and homeless, the nearly extinct species known as the LA pedestrian.

This time, the urge to call her is both absurd and overwhelming. Even during the honeymoon phase, she wouldn't have given him an ounce of sympathy. She's certainly not going to _there there _him over a scene like this now.

He stares at his phone for a long time. Finally puts it away and makes his way back along Wilshire. He contemplates what kind of apology he'll make—what kind of apology he _can _make—to Paula and what's-his-name. He probably shouldn't lead by pointing out that he at least didn't punch the idiot, but that's about all he's got at the moment.

He rounds the corner to cut through the cars packed into the valet lot. Something—a shadow with too much movement, or maybe the crunch of loose gravel—catches his eye. There, in the darkest corner of the parking lot, he can just make out Paula's silhouette writhing in between the writer and a car that's certainly too expensive to belong to him.

Castle ducks back out of the lot. He doesn't hesitate this time. He slides his thumb over her photo and speed dials her. He uses up three voice mails regaling her with the juicy blackmail material he now has on his publicist.

In the waning seconds of the third message, he is abruptly, comprehensively homesick. He thinks about hanging up, but his heart and mouth are faster than his fingers, _"I hate this, Kate. I miss you. I don't know how to do this, either, but I want . . ."_

A shrill tone sounds and the call cuts off.

He tells himself that he doesn't care if she listens or not.

* * *

He writes and rewrites the scene. A dozen drafts sitting there. He'll use it, whatever happens in their story. Whatever happens to them in real life, it will be a turning point—a pivot—for Nikki and Rook. It's too momentous not to use. It's too momentous to leave alone. To leave cold, real, and actual, without the kind veneer of retelling. Of fiction.

What happens is this_._

* * *

_She leaves him with seven brutal words. And he means to go after her once the last knot is tied. But his head is pounding and then Alexis is freaked out and _shit_ . . . things had been so chaotic, he hadn't even thought about that. _

_And then the blind item shows up. _

HOT on the trail again? Gotham's criminal element breathed easier this summer with the dynamic duo of the bachelor and the bad-ass detective apparently out of the game. Rumors have been flying for months about the pair's apparent break-up with the NYPD. But does the recent sighting of a certain writer, looking a little the worse for wear in one of the city's ERs, mean the holiday's over for violent crime? And does the tough lady have a tender side? Evil-doers beware: Sources say the HEAT may be back on.

_He'd never even seen the picture they'd run: The two of them from the back, but it's unmistakably them. Kate is in motion, pulling at his elbow with one hand, weapon drawn in the other. It had to be at least a year old. _

_He's at her door twenty minutes after the alert pops up. She lets him in. She's nodding a lot and not saying much. She's not fighting. And the passive slump of her shoulders makes him desperate. He wants to shake her. Every instinct from the early days rises up in him. To grate, to annoy. Poke, prod, needle, invade. To make her notice him. _

_He has to get out of there._

_He tells her that a couple of weeks in LA stirring up studio buzz should shift the attention off her. Give her a little peace. _

_"Weeks?" Her hand clenches around his wrist. She makes a gesture like she'd like to call the word back, but he leans in quickly and kisses her. It's the only thing remotely like hope he's felt in the last 24 hours._

_She follows him to the door. Stands there with her arms wrapped tight over her abdomen. _

_He's stalling. He doesn't want to go, but they can't just go on standing in her hallway forever._

_She's the one who speaks. "Thanks."_

_It's just one syllable, but they're both surprised enough to flinch. She works her jaw a moment like she's making up her mind. The words come fast then. A few words. "Thank you. For doing this. I . . ."_

_She stops and they are both horrified by the very real possibility that she will cry. She rushes on again. "It's hard. Everything is hard and . . ."_

_She trails off and steps into him. She opens her arms. He holds on tight and doesn't say anything._

_He wishes they'd left it there. He probably _will _leave it there for Nikki and Rook. He'll end the scene on that elegant, wordless moment._

_But for them, he ruins it. Of course he ruins it. _

_He asks her to come with him and it makes no sense at all. He has every reason to go alone. She has every reason to let him. But it hurts—it _hurts_—when she gives a startled laugh and an absolutely reflexive "No."_

_He pulls away and leaves her standing in the hallway._

* * *

The next three days are busy. He's trying to make it up to Paula, and not just because he thinks she might really quit this time. He's trying to throw himself into things with a will. Trying to remind himself that there are things about this aspect of the business that he enjoys: People, passion, different perspectives, different approaches to the story. That, yes, there's bullshit and artifice, but also a ruthless, unsentimental edge that keeps him sharp and aware and present. Things that fill the well and feed the fire.

But the homesickness stays with him, punctuated by images of a dark, empty loft. Images of all the places she's not.

He's calling Alexis too much. She's fond, but exasperated. And sad for him.

They don't really talk about Kate. Not directly. She is not an unqualified Kate supporter, though she's softened over the last couple of months. Spends a little time with her and Lanie, independent of him. But she's cautious after too many years with a ring-side seat to their ups and downs.

He's dressing for . . . he doesn't know what he's dressing for. Paula had laid out clothes for him. It's come to that. His phone rings and he has a moment of panic when he sees his daughter's round baby face fill the screen. They'd just hung up not 10 minutes ago and she'd said she was on her way to a late study session. He glances at the clock and thumbs the phone on to speaker

"Sweetie, what's wrong?" He asks as he tugs on the short end of his tie.

_"Nothing. Not with me." _

He closes his eyes. Lets his hands run through the well-practiced gestures of tying the tie. He can almost see her pale, serious face. The wrinkle between her eyebrows. Like most things lately, it breaks his heart.

"Oh, so there's something wrong with _me._" He tries to keep it light and fails.

_"Obviously." _She's not feeling the levity either.

"Alexis, I . . . "

_"Dad. Just don't. I only have a minute and I just wanted to say . . . ."_ She takes breath. _"I wanted to say: Don't give up."_

"Don't give up?" he repeats dumbly.

_"I think,"_ she says carefully, _"I think you'll never get over it, if you don't know that you did everything you could. So just . . . don't give up."_

"I won't," he says. He realizes he means it. "I won't."

He ends the call and everything suddenly looks different. He sees Kate poised and uncertain, the ER curtain clutched in one hand. Sees her fingertips dragging over his wrist and coming to rest as she pulls him through her doorway when he might have just stood there forever. Sees her wordless and utterly unexpected at the curb in front of the loft, the car idling in the background. He sees her rolling her shoulders back and standing tall in the soft light of his bedroom. Sees her holding all of herself up to that light. Refusing to hide the bruises.

He remembers the times she's shown up. The times she's been the one to bend. To shake off the irritation and pull them both back to center. The times she has dug her heels in and fought for them. Fought herself. Fought him.

He remembers that she's brave.

He looks at the clock again. There's really no time, but the phone is in his hand again, and it's already ringing.

He's completely nonplussed when she answers. "Kate. You answered."

_"Yeah."_ The word is clipped and careful and he feels the pressure to make this good.

"Ok." His mind goes temporarily blank with panic and all he can think about is the knock at the door that's coming. _Paula. _Why the fuck is it that Paula is suddenly the only thing he can think about?

The words start coming unbidden. He can't understand any of them, just hears the awful, plastic lilt of his own voice. It sounds exactly like the first radio interview he ever did. When he could afford it, he'd had dozen high-quality digital copies made. He'd burned eleven, one by one at irregular intervals, and kept the last locked in his desk, labeled with a single word: JACKASS.

He would very much like to set fire to himself right now, but things are happening. Too many things. His stomach drops as the knock comes and his mind tells him that Kate has just said something and he's missed it completely. "What?"

_"About the studio guy and Paula. You told me."_

Oh. Right. He must have been repeating his last three inane messages. _Aces. _

"So you at least listened to the messages." _Jesus_, he thinks, _that was fucking plaintive._ With half his attention on the door it's hard to judge exactly how badly he's screwing this up.

_"I listened to the messages."_

Her voice stops him dead. It's like an echo. She sounds as lonely and angry and pulled to pieces as he feels and fuck if this situation isn't the stupidest thing in the world. He mutters he doesn't know what into the mouthpiece as he covers it with one hand and wrenches the door open with the other.

He tells Paula to go on without him. That he'll be five minutes behind her. But she's spoiling for a fight. He doesn't engage. Barely even registers what she's saying before he repeats that he's taking five minutes and closes the door in her face.

"Beckett?" His heart is beating wildly as he makes his way around the room, fumbling with cufflinks. Sliding his keycard into his pocket. Trying to remember if he's supposed to be doing something at this godforsaken event. Does he have notes or something?

_"I'm here,"_ she says in that fierce, quiet voice of hers. _"You have to go."_

"No. Not right . . ." He blurts it in a panic. Her phrasing makes him frantic, superstitious. But he does have to go. It's the price for something. For whatever comes next. For now, he wants . . . he just wants to know that she'll be there. And so he asks. It really seems that simple and he feels like such a fool. He _asks._ "Three hours. I know it's late there, but I can't get out of this. If I call in three hours, will you pick up?"

_"Yeah."_ She sounds faint and far away. She sounds like she's about to run. And then she says it again like an anchor. Like she won't let herself run. _"Yeah, I'll pick up."_

He's so full of words, of things he wants to say, desires he wants to give voice to, that he finds he can't say anything at all. And he wants to throw back his head and howl at the wasted moment.

And then there they are, her words in his ear, and he thinks he must be dreaming. That Paula must have choked the life from him and left him lying there on the hotel carpet, slipping between worlds.

_"I love you, Castle."_ Her voice breaks and he knows the exact stubborn angle of her jaw. The way her eyes are narrow, determined points of fire. He knows that certainty. _"Three hours."_

She hangs up, and he knows what comes next.

* * *

Everything goes wrong. Paula, for once in her life, is so blazingly angry with him that she can't smile through it and smooth things over for the sake of the face time. He ends up launching himself into a kind of manic state to carry the evening. He works his way through the crowd, nodding, laughing, and sounding sincere. He hopes he sounds sincere. Hopes in a distant sort of way.

He gives some speech about something. It's a charity event of some kind? It must be. Well-heeled men are pressing his hand and their wives are wiping away tears. Thanking him for something or other.

He excuses himself over and over again. Flashes a years-old picture of Alexis on his phone and smiles apologies as he ducks into corners. He books a flight and a connecting flight. (_Why, other than as proof of the existence of malevolent gods, are the next three flights out of LAX all going to fucking Newark?_) A car to the airport. A car from the airport. He wheedles the concierge at the Biltmore into having his room packed up and his bag sent to meet him curbside.

It all feels like an anxiety dream. The frenzy builds. Stoplights and reroutings and last-minute crises. His bag isn't there. Then it is, but his ID is missing. He finds it stashed in a pocket he never uses, and the there's an issue with his boarding pass.

He is three heartbeats away from losing it and he needs to get through security _now_. He needs to get through security 10 minutes ago, truth be told. His own name is bouncing off the airport walls as he sprints the length of the terminal.

He shouts at the gate attendant, who is just closing the door. She doesn't seem to appreciate the dramatics, and he only has breath for one word, "Please."

He imagines what he must look like, panting, sweat plastering his dress shirt to his back, French cuffs flapping open. He should have something for this. A charming smile. A compelling argument. A story. But he just doesn't. He says it again: "Please."

She narrows her eyes at him and he thinks he might just lay himself down and die. He's so tired, so _done. _

She scowls and grabs her radio. "One more coming down the jetway."

He drops into the middle seat and tries to hide the phone just long enough to dial, send a text, anything, but they're pushing back and the flight attendant already has it in for him. He holds up the phone in a submissive gesture as he powers it off. Idly notes the time as the screen goes black. It's 39 minutes past the time he told her he'd call.

* * *

He calls the minute the wheels touch down in Newark. Calls again as he races to the connecting flight that he swears must be boarding in Philadelphia. Sneaks in a text as they push back on their way to JFK. There's nothing—nothing—from her when they touch down in New York.

He's going to need a new car service. This one surely won't take his money ever again, once the driver reports back that Richard Castle is a complete fucking lunatic.

He gives the driver his address. Then hers. Then his again. Holds a foul-mouthed three-minute conversation with himself and settles on the loft as his destination. He can't just show up on her doorstep in the wee hours of the morning, six hours late, even if she is acting like an unholy goddamned child by not picking up the goddamned phone. He zips the phone away in the recesses of his bag. Closes snaps and buckles over it. Vows he is done—_done_—calling and it's her move.

He throws himself out of the car and tosses what he hopes is a generous tip through the window. Eduardo stirs sleepily and says something to him, but Castle waves him off. The elevator is moving nightmarishly slowly and he's digging the phone back out of his bag.

He hits redial again. Angry words are bubbling on the end of his tongue, but all that comes out is her name. "Kate."

He fumbles with the key, the door, his own damned fingers and _Christ, what the hell is wrong with the goddamned door? _He jams his ear to his shoulder to brace the phone, and his neck cries out in protest. "Kate, I know . . ."

The door swings open and he nearly jumps out of his skin. She's standing in the middle of his loft. And there's her name a third time. An incantation. "Kate . . ."

Two very logical areas of his mind present two very logical possibilities for this turn of events. One: He hasn't slept in days and he's hallucinating. Two: The murdered-by-Paula hypothesis is back by popular demand.

The rest of him is dropping things and slamming doors and taking possession of what seems inarguably to be Kate Beckett, very much in the flesh. And dead or crazy, it's so much better than he remembered. Than he imagined. He doesn't think he could conjure up the feel of her hair coiled around is hand or the perfect arch of her spine as he slides the heel of his hand up her back. Bending, bending.

But the logical part has to know. He bites down on her shoulder. It seems like a good idea for a fraction of a second. When he tastes blood, it seems like a very bad idea indeed.

And then she invades and it seems like the best idea in the world. Her fingernails demand his attention. Her teeth retaliate. A constant stream of filthy, articulate curses, insults, and demands all have his hair standing on end.

He answers back, unthinking. Endearments and epithets and pleas and she can't even really be listening. Because they're things she'd never let him get away with if she were. Because in a just world, the things she's doing with her hands and her hips and her mouth are completely incompatible with listening or thought or speech.

She lets herself go heavy against him and his arms tighten around her to take the weight. For a moment, it's like they're dancing. She curves into him. He arches over her, above her. And it's effortless.

Then she raises up against him and her toes leave the floor and he needs more of her. All of her. He sweeps her backward and it's rushed and not like dancing at all anymore, but he has to have her under his hands.

She's very clever, because she's somehow worked his shirt open and skimmed it off his shoulders before he can even remember what buttons are. He feels a flare of irritation, jealousy, that she's always like this—sleek, efficient, agile—while he fumbles and tugs with shaking hands. He jerks at one of her sleeves and sends something toppling off the console table.

She grunts and snaps at him not to fight her, but he loses the thread entirely when her shoulders roll back as she keeps working at the sleeves. The sharp peak of her nipple straining against the sheer fabric of her bra makes him frantic. He clutches and insists and he can't get his mouth on her fast enough. With his tongue working over and over the contours of her breast, the mystery unlocks itself. One hand twists, the other slides and her clothing falls away.

Kate Beckett wants what she wants, but he's not inclined to give it to her right now. Her shoulders rise and fall and rotate and she's trying to impose a rhythm. She moans encouragement and he changes tactics. He nips and tweaks, then kisses, brushes, nuzzles, scrapes his teeth and plants words against the marks.

She's mewling and frustrated and can hardly keep herself sitting upright. She's trying to get her hands on him, but he angles their bodies to his advantage. Keeps at her. He's nowhere near finished with her.

How in the _hell _she gets his entire fucking belt off before he's even aware that her hands are working again, he'll never know. It seems like a less urgent question when she traps her own hand between them, traps his thighs against the edge of the table and _grinds_.

"_Fuck, _Beckett!" He strains to stay still, afraid that if he so much as _breathes_, he'll come hard against her palm.

She pulls back and gives him an annoyed look. He would be annoyed in turn, but he's too grateful for the fact that it takes his mind off the pros and cons of retaliatory grinding. Her eyes narrow and he's suddenly worried—very worried—that she can read his mind.

Slowly, deliberately, she lifts her hips and the look on her face is positively obscene.

His head falls to her shoulder and he's cursing, threatening, pleading, negotiating. It takes a second to realize he's suddenly staring up at the ceiling because she's tearing his hair out at the roots as she demands . . . something.

The sounds gradually become words, "Let me down."

He wrenches her wrist away from the back of his head, slams her palm down on the table and pins it there. If she thinks she's running . . . if she thinks that either of them is walking out of this under their own power, she's crazier than he is.

"No," he growls in her ear. Bites down on it and says it again. "No."

But then she uses it: The Beckett voice. He doesn't even know what she's saying, but his hands loosen under their own power and he's backing away. Her feet hit the floor, solid, sure, and graceful as always. But her knees give out and her hip bones slide perfectly into his palms. She catches his forearms and holds on. Steady and solid from the minute they connect.

There's a rush of gladness in him. His chest opens and he feels lighter. He feels his skin flush and he smiles down at her, but she's angry again. She pinches and twists and OW. SHIT. What the _hell_? He doesn't know what she wants, but decides that she can't have it without a fight, if that's what she wants. And the obviously broken logic in _that_ only makes him more stubborn.

He sees her hands working at her own jeans, furious and, for once, actually clumsy. He slaps them away and does it for her. She jerks herself back on the table and seems to have definite ideas about his mouth's next destination. He stalls, even though they're in violent agreement about that particular point. He bites down on her hip. Drags his teeth and tongue in an arc that sweeps low, low across her belly.

She can't look at him. If she does, she'll beg. And that's the best case scenario. Because, yes, she's on fire with his breath hot and wet between her thighs, but she's also just so unbelievably _thankful _that he's here and with her, and there are all kinds of dangerous confessions she might make. She can't look at him, but she does anyway and she thinks he knows every single secret she's keeping.

He gives her the wickedest smile in the world and tastes her. And then she _is_ begging and he's everywhere she needs him to be a breath before she asks. Everything he does with his tongue, his teeth, his lips, with her, is exactly right and she's howling. It feels like it goes on forever.

She's exhausted and weak with it, and she needs more of him. She pulls at him, tugs him up and he's slow. So slow and deliberate, and it makes her furious that he's not burning for her the way she's burning for him. She'll make him. She'll make him.

She launches herself at him and he stops her cold. She's used to him being gentle. Careful. Holding back and happy enough to follow her lead. Well, he's not now. He's pinning her arms and holding her up, and she _needs_ him. She just needs him _now _and why won't he fucking listen?

She hip checks him and turns. Presses herself back up against him for an instant, then falls forward against the couch and _thank god_ he finally seems to get the message. And _oh _it's good. Short strokes, tight and hard and no time to breathe with his weight on her and his curses and promises hot in her ear.

He comes and she doesn't know if either of them will still be drawing breath when she pulls his hand, her hand between her legs. She can hardly move any more, but she can't stop either and, incredibly, he's able to pull her upright against him and take her over the edge again.

She turns awkwardly against him. She wants to kiss him. Wants to see his face, but she's suddenly shy. Embarrassed. Afraid of what she'll say when he's reduced her to this.

He kisses her while she's still fretting over it.

She stiffens. She wants to run and she knows he knows it. And she will not—_will not_—do it to either of them. She chokes out as many words as she thinks she can risk. "Couch. No talking."

He follows as she tugs at him, but he's wary. He can see her shoulders, her chin, her face falling into sharp, defensive lines. It's depressingly familiar. But then she rounds on him and her face is such a mixture of anger and petulance and it's . . . well it's adorable. And his existence will end abruptly, probably in fire, if she catches even a hint of that thought. He folds her against him. Hides his smile in her hair.

This is what she's missed. The way he gives to her. The warmth of his chest, his arms, and that crooked smile he thinks she doesn't know about. That she should probably be pissed about. But she wants it. She _wants_ it all the time.

He says two words in her ear and with his fingers anchored at her waist, his ribs against her spine, and the two of them together—really together— for the first time in what feels like weeks, they sound like the greatest seduction in history. "Bed, Kate."

And goddamn her broken mind to hell, she can't do it. All the reasons that none of this fixes anything come raining down on her and she's wrenching free from the only place she ever wants to be and yelling in his face.

He's stunned and hurt, but only for a fraction of a second before he retreats to careful, distant neutrality. He sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. Echoes her, and what the hell is that about? He's the one who left. He's the one who's treating her like she's some casual fuck buddy he has to entertain with tales from his thrilling celebrity life. He's the one who can't see how hard this is. Can't see that's she's _trying_.

"What the hell are you pissed at _me_ for?"

He laughs and turns his words against her. He can't stop himself. Makes a pretty, snide little joke. "Would you like a numbered list? A series of haikus? A dozen villanelles end to end?"

The look on her face is like a thousand needles in his skin, and why do they keep _doing this _to one another?

He might be crying. She's definitely crying, and she clings to him when his arms slide around her. Everything is tumbling loose in her mind. She can't regret her heavy limbs or the sleepy satisfaction unfurling deep in her veins. But however good it was (_and oh my god_), it feels like running. It feels like them trapped in their well-worn patterns, and she can't wake up tomorrow with nothing solved.

She _hates _how hard this is. Hates it. He's murmuring against her cheek and she just wants to give in. Her fingers close hard against the small of his back, and she's suddenly struck by the solidity of him. A spark flares to life in her. His curse in her ear feeds the flame and she asks, "How did you get here?"

"Wormhole," he says instantly.

She laughs an insult against his neck and wants to kiss him in gratitude when he doesn't leave it at that. When he makes his own confession. And ugh, it's a ridiculous story. A bottom-of-the-barrel romantic comedy climax and she hates herself for melting a little at it. It's a grand gesture, but it's work, too, and she feels him shaking against her with cold and exhaustion.

She tilts her head and peeks at him out of the corner of her eye. He looks old. He looks like a little boy. She finds a compromise. A place between running and standing still. "Just give me number one, Castle. And then we can go to bed."

She feels his heart stutter. His breath catches and he holds her just that much closer for a moment. It's fear at first, then courage. It makes her brave. Makes her face down the sick feeling in her stomach and listen. Really listen.

"Number one." He rests his forehead against her temple and whispers, "You hold your breath like you're waiting for us to fail."


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: See? I told you all I was an angst!wimp. Not exactly fluff, but still . . . Thank you all for wanting more in the first place and reading and reviewing. I'd love to know how you think this turned out.

* * *

Kate wakes slowly, sluggishly. In a way that's totally unlike her. The left side of her body feels smaller than her right. She gradually becomes aware that she feels like hell in general. Her throat, her eyes feel scraped and swollen. Her head weighs a hundred pounds. And what the hell is happening with her skin?

She's shivering. Her left side is shivering, anyway. Her skin contracts violently, pulls at protesting muscles like the cold is trying to roll her up tight. Meanwhile, the heat on the right side of her is stifling. She's trapped. Weighted down.

She jerks away from the warmth. Slides the right side of her body free from a mountain of blankets. _Blankets._ _So many blankets. Why are there so many blankets? _

She's shivering all over now, but at least she's one size: Curled into a tight ball at the edge of the bed. _Bed_. Not her bed. His bed. His loft. Which explains the absurd number of blankets _and _the ridiculous temperature.

Memories slot into place and pull her bolt upright. She perches on the edge of the bed, hunches into herself, toes curled under, fingers gripping the mattress. The phone call. His promise. _Three hours_. Her waiting. Waiting like a fool. And then she came here, right? Let herself in and fell asleep surrounded by his things. And then?

She feels sore and heavy underneath the chill. She shivers again, but it's not entirely unpleasant this time. Her fingers find a tender spot on her shoulder, her hip, her breast. Her eyes drop to her lap. A trail of half-moon marks on the outside of her thigh. A soft, purple-red mark the shape of a kiss, high, high up on the inside.

She twists back toward the warmth, and there he is. Nothing but a shock of dark hair and one ear visible in the jumbled topography of blankets, sheets, and pillows. He came back. He came home.

She's not sure what to do with that. Except that's not true. She knows exactly what she _wants _to do with that. She wants to slide her body back between the sheets. Snake her arms around him and draw him up out of sleep and into her. She wants to get lost with him. Get lost in him.

But they can't go on this way. Can't go on stringing the days together with need and silence. With worry souring into bottled-up anger.

She's shaking now, not shivering. Her heart is pounding and the room suddenly feels too small, too dark, too cold. She drags in a breath. Laces her fingers behind her head and presses her face to her knees. Hears his voice in her ear. _You hold your breath like you're waiting for us to fail. _

A sob ripples through her, and it feels like too much. Too much longing. Too much hurt. She's too broken. He's too willing to let her be. Too willing to settle. And someday he won't be willing. Someday he'll go.

She winds herself up. Gathers up the fear, the hurt. She lets it thread its way through her body. Feels it reach through arteries and vessels to the farthest reaches of her fingertips. Her toes. And then it breaks like a fever. Fractures into pieces. Rubble, not a wall. She lets out a long breath and a little of even that ebbs away. She draws in another breath. Fills up the space with air and light. With thoughts from her better self.

_One thing at a time. What can you fix? _

* * *

Castle rolls to his side with a grunt, then flops on to his back. He instinctively claps a hand over his eyes and squeezes them shut against the terrible light.

Something is off. He separates his fingers and peers cautiously between them. No daggers of light slanting across the bed, stabbing into his brainstem. Nothing but delicious gloom. He stretches contentedly and lets his eyes slip closed again.

Something—traffic noises, probably—tells him it's daytime, though. He'd like to drift back off to sleep, but it nags at him. If it's day, then why isn't the sun trying to kill him? Somewhere in the center of his brain, the teeth of one mental cog catch the teeth of another and suggest it might be raining.

The delightful thought draws him down. He flips over again and burrows belly first into the mattress. Tugs the comforter tight over his shoulders and tucks his head back into the cavern of pillows.

He's just at the edge of sleep when the next thought tips him back to the wrong side again. _It can't be raining. It's LA. _Only It's not LA. It's home. He's home. He's home and Kate was here and now . . .

He lifts his head and confirms that there's nothing but mattress as far as his bleary eyes can see. Now she's _not_ here. Or maybe she never was. Maybe he dreamed the whole thing. The thought makes him feel sick and frantic. He was supposed to call and he didn't because he was trying to get home and then she wouldn't answer the phone. He has to talk to her. Has to explain.

The covers snake around his legs, winding tighter as he kicks at them. Various parts of his body pipe up to support the not-a-dream theory. His hips and shoulders are sore, his knees feel bruised, and—_OW. Jesus Christ!_—what happened to his _nipple?_

Kate was _definitely _here. And now she's definitely not. He pauses in his fight to the death with the blankets and reaches a hand out. Tentative. Afraid to hope.

It's still warm. Her side of the bed is still warm. So she's not here, but she hasn't been gone long.

He sucks in a breath and rests a palm against his chest, as though he can will his heart to stop racing. His mind grudgingly offers up another piece of helpful information: Something woke him up.

On cue, "something" makes itself known again: A thud, a pause, and a couple of sharp raps. There's a rumbling undercurrent, too. Could be words. He jerks at the covers and they loosen enough to let him sit up halfway. He cocks his head toward the bedroom door and listens. It happens again. The same sequence of sounds and those are definitely words. Not just words:Swearing.

His heart speeds up again. She's here. _She's still here._

* * *

She's wrapped up in two mismatched throws: Brown and burgundy plaid around her waist and some wispy cream-colored thing his mother loves that's tossed toga-style over one shoulder. It leaves the other shoulder bare, one graceful, well-muscled arm free. This seems integral to her plan for . . . attacking the living room wall?

"Kate?" He peers at her from the office doorway. He's sleepy and cool and the gloom is so inviting. He wants slide his fingers down that long, bare arm, fold her palm against his, and coax her back to bed. Spend a rainy autumn day writing stories on her body.

But she's standing there, frozen. Afraid. Her face is pale and drawn in the low light.

She watches him closely as he stumbles into the room, cinching the waist on his pajama pants. He says her name again and she stirs herself. Drops her hand guiltily and hides her fingers against the folds of fabric draping around her.

"I'm cold." It comes out petulant. She straightens her shoulders as if that doesn't make it worse.

"Ok." He has the strong sense that laughing, even smiling—showing amusement in any way, shape, or form—would be a mistake, but she's still here and she's wrapped up in blankets she's scavenged from his office, his living room, his _home._ And it's hard not to love it. Hard not to show that he loves it. "You're cold. So you're . . . taking it out on the wall?"

"I was going to turn down the air conditioning." Now she sounds defensive. _Fantastic_.

He hopes that she can't see any better than he can in this light. Hopes that she doesn't sense the amusement that's tugging at the corners of his mouth. When he thinks he has it together enough that his voice won't betray him, he chooses his words carefully. "You know that's not the thermostat, right?"

Her skin flushes and she knows, just _knows, _he can tell. Even from there, he can tell. She shivers despite the rush of blood. Clutches the blankets tighter around her.

Suddenly he's not across the room any more. He's at her side, one hand on her elbow, the other pressing the soft fabric of the throw against the small of her back. He flinches and she knows he sees it, the bruise. The broken skin on her shoulder. Where it all started the night before.

"Come on," he says softly. "I'll show you."

* * *

There are two thermostats, it turns out: One in the long hallway to control the upstairs and one for the lower part of the loft.

"Mother and Alexis don't like it as cold." He runs a warm, broad palm over her shoulder. "I should've realized you wouldn't either."

"I should've said." She snaps, but not at him. At least he thinks it's not at him.

"It'll take a little while to warm up." He tugs at the corner of the blanket draped over her shoulder. "Do you want something else . . . something to wear?" he amends quickly when she gives him a sharp look. "In the mean time."

"My clothes are kind of trashed," she admits with a cryptic not-quite smile.

He misses it, the smile or whatever she meant it to be, because he's backpedaling. Putting distance between them.

"Yeah," he mumbles. He's scowling at his hands. "I'm sorry."

She goes after him without hesitation. Pulls his head toward her and kisses him long and hard. Lets the blanket slip from her shoulder and presses her bare skin against his. "I'm not," she says fiercely in his ear. "I'm not sorry."

He holds himself apart for a heartbeat or two before his arms go around her waist. His palms slide up her back, cover her shoulder blades. He can't quite mask the catch in his voice.

"You're ok?" He whispers it against the broken skin on her shoulder. Before she can answer with more than a breathy laugh and a nod, he's peeling himself off her and wrapping her back up in the blanket. "No, you're freezing."

He hustles her through the living room. Casts a helpless look at the rumpled heap of her jeans and top behind the couch. "You don't . . ." He stops himself. He doesn't want . . . he's not blaming.

She flinches a bit. It feels like blame. Even without the words. From him or from her. It feels like blame, and it's not off the mark.

"I don't have anything here," she says. Wishes her voice wouldn't shake. She wills it not to shake, because she wants him to understand that wherever this conversation is going, here's where it ends up if she has anything to say about it. She steps back from him, but keeps hold of his wrist. Looks him in the eye and says, "I should keep some things here."

He lights up, and the hard line of his shoulders lets go, just a little. It's still there, the sadness and worry. The frustration. The anger. It's all still there, but she knows he understands.

"You should keep some things here," he says, quiet and sure. He smiles. A little sad, a little wary, more than a little frightened, but he smiles. "For now . . . something of Alexis's? Is that weird?"

"It's a little weird," she admits, but the blanket around her waist is slipping and anyway it's scratchy.

His eyes follow the line of plaid as it dips lower and lower. His lips twist in disappointment when she snatches it close around her just in time.

"Castle!" She laughs, but her heart's not entirely in it. It's easy. Too easy to fall back into each other. Too easy to let her body go, too. She raises her eyes to his and the heat she finds is just about enough to make her say_ screw it._ To let the soft curve of her lower back nestle against his palm. To fit her hips against his in a sure and perfect rhythm.

She says his name again. Breathes it this time. She's killing him, the way she's looking at him. It's not a test, but it is. She wants him exactly as much as he wants her. Always wants her. But it's not enough and it's not all they have. And it's not the time.

He steps closer. Her face falls a little, but she leans into him. He nips at her neck once, then bends her back all of a sudden. Dips her into a melodramatic movie pose and rumbles in her ear, "My mother has some exquisite caftans."

She laughs with her whole body. It fizzes up all the way from her toes. She slaps at his chest as she pulls herself up, "No caftans!"

He nods at her seriously. "You're right. I see you in muumuus, Beckett."

It's not that funny, but she is absolutely undone by it. She's wheezing. Leaning helplessly against the back of the couch, blankets sliding and bunching around her. She sobers a little when she catches sight of his face.

He's looking at her like she's a miracle and, oh, she _loves_ him. Loves him. This good, frustrating man who is more complicated than she ever imagined. She loves him and she lets him see it.

His breath catches a little and words rush out before she thinks he meant them to. "Get back in bed, Kate."

She makes a soft sound, half frustration, half fear. More than a little disappointment.

"Not like that," he says quickly, then stops. "I mean not like that right _now_. Unless you. . . ." He stops again and frowns. "No. Not like that right now. _None _of that right now. But it's warmer there. Just. . . ." He makes his own frustrated sound and steers her toward the office. "Take all the blankets. Make your own Maginot Line with pillows. Whatever. Just . . . we'll talk."

He stops in the doorway and kisses her briefly. His palm whispers over her cheek as he tilts her head back to look her in the eyes. "We'll talk, Kate. I want . . . I want to spend the day with you. I want to spend the whole day in bed with you."

And how can she say no to that?

* * *

She's absurdly nervous. She's been in his bed a hundred times. Woken up in it . . . less often, but not never.

And she's still freezing.

She starts to slide into the bed, then thinks better of it. There has to be something she can put on. A t-shirt . . . something. A good idea for any number of reasons.

She steals over to the dresser like a thief and silently slides open drawer after drawer. _Socks. Socks. Underwear. Oh, for the love of . . . are those _pocket squares? Two drawers of jeans. Sweaters. _Who wastes drawer space on sweaters?_

She turns this way and that, her nerves making her irritable. She takes a step toward the closet and hesitates. It feels like an intrusion. She tells herself it's ridiculous, given that she's just literally been rifling through his underwear drawer, but she can't make herself turn the handle.

She darts into the bathroom and: _Victory!_ A faded green t-shirt hanging on a hook by the shower. She slips it over her head and pulls up short. It's soft and frayed and _god_ it smells like him. She feels like some kind of romantic comedy refugee. Wants to kick herself. But she can't quite keep the smile off her face.

She steps back into the bedroom just as he appears in the doorway from the office. He freezes. He's carrying a ridiculous breakfast-in-bed tray and looks like he's about to drop it.

"Castle?" She brushes a wave of hair off her forehead and twists it behind her ear.

"I . . . that's . . ." He gestures with the corner of the tray and threatens to send its contents to the floor. He recovers. "That's no muumuu."

She holds on to the smile and makes her way to the bed. She piles pillows against the headboard and settles herself cross-legged in front of them. Pulls a blanket or two from the oversized heap and spreads them over her lap. She's not warm yet, but the chill turns pleasant and her limbs, her spine feel lazy and heavy. She tilts her chin up at him with a look that says she's staying put.

He lets out the breath he didn't know he was holding and moves into the room. He sets the tray down in front of her knees and pops back upright, but not soon enough. His hands are shaking hard enough to rattle the dishes on the tray and she's seen it. He knows she's seen it.

He's wound tight. Excited and afraid in a dozen different ways, and he wishes they could lie together in the dark whispering the good-parts version of their own story back and forth. But there's work to do before that.

He ducks around the other side of the bed. Switches on the bedside lamp, then switches it off again. "Too bright," he mutters and moves to the far wall. He flips the switch by one of the wall sconces and looks to her for approval, "That ok?"

She doesn't answer right away. She's trying to get used to this version of him. Shy Castle is a little bit of a heartbreaker.

"It's good," she says at last. "Come on, Castle." She pats the mound of blankets next to her.

He makes his way back to the bed wishing he could shake the awkward teenager who seems to be occupying his body. He sits, careful not to jostle the tray too much, and stretches his legs out in front of him. "You must be hungry, right? There's not a lot that wasn't . . . growing. I forget that without Alexis here . . . I started some coffee. Should be ready in a minute."

"Thanks," she says quietly. They're feeding off each other's nerves and it's so _stupid_ she could scream. She pops a grape in her mouth so that she _doesn't _scream, and suddenly realizes she's ravenous. There's cheese, some apple slices, more grapes. Crackers and some granola. And . . . "Marshmallows?" She gives him a look.

"Fat free. Low crumb potential. Ideal breakfast-in-bed food," he argues as he reaches over to snag a couple of crackers.

She laughs and nudges the tray with her knee, "Who even has these things? I've never seen one except on TV."

"Got them from," he stops as he realizes he's mumbling around a mouthful of cheese. "Sorry. Got them from an As Seen on TV catalog. Alexis and I switched off bringing each other Sunday breakfast in bed every week for years."

She hesitates. Thinks a minute. Remembers a Sunday or two and wonders. "But not this summer." She blurts it out before she can tuck it away. "Not lately."

"No. Not for a while," he says. "It was more my thing. She kind of grew out of it. Got busy."

His voice. It's a little sad and a little something else that she's not quite getting. A loose thread that she has to pull.

"Why Sunday?" She pops a marshmallow in her mouth with a look that dares him to comment, but he's not looking at her.

"Traditional," he shrugs. "Brunch, pancakes, church basements. It's the day of the week we choose to make a big deal out of the most important meal of the day."

"Why Sunday?" she repeats slowly. She watches him until he meets her eye and asks again. "Why Sunday?"

His heart speeds up. It's a look he hasn't seen in months. Maybe the first look he fell in love with: Interrogation Beckett. He realizes he's grinning stupidly at her. At Interrogation Beckett. And that's a big mistake.

"I hate Sundays," he stammers. "I've always hated Sundays. They're school nights. The end of the weekend."

"You haven't been in school in decades," she scoffs. Overdoes it a little because the sad lines around his eyes make her heart hurt and she wants to tease him out of it. But she also wants to know.

"Oh, but it's the pain—the depression, the despair—they linger. You never recover. When you are old and grey and full of sleep, you still suffer from the Sunday Night Blues." He's trying to match her tone. He's overdoing it, too, but he stops himself.

She's asking. Asking for one of his stories and he wants to honor that. "They were her school nights, too. And the end of her weekends with Meredith when she had them. If they lasted the weekend. Too little time to try to get back to normal. Not a lot to love about Sundays."

They've somehow finished the food, marshmallows and all. Castle rolls on to his side to gather up the tray. "Coffee?"

She nods and he shifts himself off the bed, tray in hand. She's about to let him go when something strikes her. "Is that why you called?"

He stops in the doorway and turns back. Gives her a puzzled look.

"It's . . . well it's Monday now. But it was Sunday. I didn't give you a lot of reasons to call." It's matter of fact. Curious. Theory-Building Beckett.

Something drops into place. A realization. He wants to toss the tray aside and dive back into the bed. Press her back against the headboard and show her the hundred reasons and more why he called. While he'll always call. But they're not doing that right now, right? He spares a moment to wonder whose fucking genius plan _that _was.

"I called because I missed you, Kate. Because I was lonely for _you_," he says quietly. "And because it was a fucking stupid idea to leave."

"But a good idea, too."

It hurts her to say it. It hurts him to hear it. But it's not untrue.

"Maybe a good idea, too, with . . . everything," he says, "but not like that. I shouldn't have left like that."

"Not like that," she says, just as quietly.

* * *

He can't tell if the coffee was a good thing or a bad thing. If it broke their momentum or broke them out of another go-around in a vicious cycle. Either way, they're quiet now.

It's comfortable. There's a kind of spell in the patter of rain, the gusts of wind that tug on the windows while the glass rumbles and holds fast. The part of himself that he doesn't like very much—the part of himself that got them here, or helped anyway—likes the quiet. Whispers that they're good. That if they stay quiet, it'll all blow over.

He sets his empty cup aside and slithers down the headboard. Grabs a pillow and wraps his arms around it. He busies his hands. Traces the stitching over and over. Keeps as much of himself out of trouble as he can. There's a lot of trouble to be had with her so close, the stretched out neck of his t-shirt slipping from her shoulder.

She's still sipping her coffee and he wonders if she's stalling. Probably not. She's just . . . thinking. Measuring. Weighing. Planning and mapping out what she'll say. Good and bad, certain and uncertain. Strategy Beckett.

He can see it all for once. In the smiles she hides behind the steam curling up from her cup. The rise and fall of her shoulders as she knits her brow and sets her jaw. The way her eyes travel over him and dart away. It might be the low light or the rain's unbroken spell, or it might just be that Kate Beckett has made up her mind to do this. For once, she's like an open book.

He reaches out a hand and trails his fingers over the hip nearest him. It's dangerous. Shirt, sheet, blanket, comforter. They all separate his skin from hers, and it's still dangerous. His voice comes out low and rough. "You should go first."

A moment too late, he realizes it's an odd thing to say. Unfortunate phrasing.

But she just nods and tips back the last of her coffee. She sets the cup down and swings her legs off the bed.

He tenses, thinking maybe she misunderstood after all, but she's just heading for the light switch.

She pauses with her hand poised over it. "Is this . . . Ok? Can I turn this off?"

He nods, but her hand doesn't move.

She gives him a dirty look. Narrows her eyes and snaps, "I'm not hiding."

The thought hadn't even occurred to him, and he might feel a little hard done by if she weren't standing in his bedroom, the frayed hem of his t-shirt barely reaching past the fingertips pressed against her thigh.

"Not hiding," he repeats and buries his chin, his nose in the pillow he's still clutching. Leaves nothing but an exaggerated expression of innocence peeking out over the top.

It works. She gives him a grudging smile and it feels like old times.

"I didn't mean to make you darker," he says suddenly.

She's halfway back in the bed. The blankets hover for a moment. Flutter down to cover the sharp precipice of her knees.

She wants to say something. He knows that, but she hesitates and he rushes in again. "I'm sorry. My stuff. And I already got to . . ." He huffs and displaces the too-long fall of hair over one eye. He hides in earnest now, and his voice is small. "I already got to say something terrible."

She shoves herself between the sheets with a will. Props her head on a sharp-angled elbow and stares him down from a fraction of an inch away. "No. No, Castle. That's not how it goes."

He's speechless. Abject and contrite. She's watching him so closely that he can't remember how the muscles of his face work. His throat, his vocal cords feel young, alien.

She waits a long moment and falls on him. Her left hand rakes through his hair and then trails a line down his side to grasp his hip and pull their bodies together. She kisses him on a long, long, wordless breath. She pulls back and makes sure he's looking. That she has his attention. "That's not how it happened. Ok?"

He doesn't know what to say, so he nods and lifts up to kiss her softly. Once, twice. Raises himself and straightens his arms. He lays her carefully back on her side of the bed. Traces his own long line down her body as though he's putting the pieces of her back together. "Ok."

They lie together in the dark for a moment. Face to face. Sharing breath.

When she speaks, she speaks clearly and deliberately. Each syllable outlined in sharp, definite tones: "You have to stop settling."

* * *

His head feels hollowed out, and he's exhausted in a lackadaisical sort of way. It's partly jet lag, partly insomnia hangover, and mostly . . . reverse arguing with Beckett, for lack of a better term, which should be some kind of extreme sport with its own annual games.

Apparently he's not allowed to just be happy that they're together. He's not allowed to be glad about what she can give, he's supposed to nag her about what she _hasn't_ given. What she isn't giving. Drive her away by being needy. He's supposed to make demands and refuse her things. Apparently that's what he's supposed to be doing. Because otherwise he's grading on a curve. He's _settling_.

"Are you done sulking?" She's trying to keep her tone even, but she's annoyed. And scared. He hasn't said a word in a good twenty minutes.

"If you knew me at all, Beckett, you'd know that I'll never be done sulking." It should be funnier than it is, but he doesn't sound like himself. He sounds subdued. Resigned.

"I'm not fragile, Castle." She really expects a reaction from that, but he just lies there, legs straight, hands at his sides, eyes on the ceiling.

She knots her fingers behind her head, pulls her elbows in tight on either side of her face. Drags her knees up and in. This is all going wrong. She's doing this all wrong. She doesn't know how else to say it, but she's doing it all wrong.

He doesn't move, but he speaks. Finally, he speaks in a voice that's unsure and thick with emotion. "I didn't get to see it."

She lets one elbow drop and turns her head toward him, but he's not looking at her. He's swallowing hard and trying to make the words come, so she just waits. It's probably less than an minute, but it feels like an eternity.

He drops his head to the side and meets her eye. There's more than five months of hurt there. There's anger and loss and a weariness that didn't just show up one day.

"I don't think you're fragile. I know you've healed. But I didn't get to see it. You were dying and then you wanted time. And when you showed up that day. After . . ." His chest heaves once. It's too much. He jerks his head back to center, fixes his eyes on the ceiling again and rushes on " . . . after _so _ long. I don't even think I realized until you showed up that day that I thought . . . that I was stuck with that image of you in my mind. Dying."

A tear leaks from the corner of his eye and slips over his temple. He raises an impatient hand to swipe at it, but she catches his wrist and settles his hand back on the bed. She trails her own fingertip along the tear's path. Catches the next one and the next one.

"How am I supposed to be anything but so _grateful_ when I never expected to see you breathing again?" His voice starts out low and thready, but then it's stronger. Angrier. "Shouldn't _one _of us be grateful?"

Her own anger rises up to meet his. She grabs his chin and makes him look at her. Hisses in face. "You think I'm not _grateful_? I told you . . . the night of the storm, I _told_ you . . ."

"You told me. I know. You told me. You almost died. Guess what? You _did_ die," he snatches her hand away from his face. Holds it up between them. Presses his fingertips hard against her pulse. "This. I felt this stop. Your blood was all over me, and I _felt it stop_. Why wasn't that enough?"

He pushes her back on the bed. Falls over her. Hems her in with his forearms. "Why wasn't this enough, Kate?"

His head drops forward and he touches his lips to her scar. And again. Gently, so gently. With a tenderness that's totally at odds with the short, grudging pulls of breath through his teeth. With the anger that's shuddering through his body.

She feels calm. Centered. And it's so strange. She feels calm and she wants to soothe him. Comfort him. _And why not_?

She wraps her arms around him. Shifts a little to the side and eases his head on to her chest. Takes his weight. He's choking out sounds, but they're not words any more. She just holds him. Waits. It takes time. A long time, but eventually his breath settles down, slow and even.

She draws in her own deep, shuddering breath, and he startles. She draws her arms tighter around him and keeps him there. She needs to say this and maybe she's a coward, but she can't look at him while she does.

"Castle, you know. . . ." She bites her own cheek. Uses the sharp twinge as a focus. Forces herself to go on. "You know I remember everything. But the way I remember it . . ."

His hands are moving over her now. Soothing. He's murmuring against her skin. Shushing her. Telling her he knows and she doesn't have to do this and _Jesus_ she would really like to let him settle right now. Just this once, let him settle for another not-quite-apology, not-quite-explanation. But she can't and she won't.

"The way I remember it. It's like . . . facts. Like a case file or a murder board."

He stills and she feels his head cock to the side. He's curious. Interested now and it makes her smile a little. Makes it just a little easier to go on.

"When I see this," she dips her chin down to look. Rests a fingertip on the scar next to his lips. "I know it happened. But it's like I wasn't there. Like I had to not be there. And then there was so much to do. It was so much _work_ just to breathe and move. And pain. God, so much pain."

"Still," he says softly. "You still have it sometimes."

"Still," she admits. "But less and less. Better every day. Not just here." She catches his fingers as the trail down her ribs. Presses them against her heart. "Less here. And here," she adds as she presses them against her temple.

"I'm glad," he says, but it sounds helpless. Dissatisfied. "Of course I'm glad. I want it to be less. I want it to be none. I want . . ."

She presses a finger to his lips. "I can't take back last summer. And I don't . . . I don't know if I should? Maybe there were a dozen ways for me to get here. Better ways . . ."

"Ways with 100% less you almost dying?" He grumbles.

"Castle." She tugs his ear sharply, and he quiets. Acknowledges that it's still her turn with a nod. "I can't take it back. But I can tell you about it, maybe?"

She feels him tense. It feels like forever and she just wants him to say something. And then he relaxes. Stretches through his whole body and settles against her. Presses a lazy, not-quite-innocent kiss between her breasts and anchors his fingers to her hips.

"Yes," he says contentedly. "Tell me. Tell me a story, Kate."

* * *

She tells him. She tells him about the grueling physical therapy. The hated pain killers. Vomiting them up, tearing the stitches. The blood coming and coming through the bandages as she lay on the cool tile in her bathroom trying to find a way to make it stop burning.

About sobbing and screaming at a dead man for betraying her. For making a dozen years of her life into the worst kind of lie. About therapy. About what an _asshole_ Burke can be with his composure and smug rhetorical questions. About how she hates seeing him. Hates that she still needs it. Hates that it's all still so _hard_.

Castle is quiet through most of it. Keeps himself quiet by pressing himself into her skin. Kneading the knots out of her neck, her shoulders when the words get faint and rough.

It's not easy. She has choice words about him. Anger. Blame. For Montgomery. For taking the choice away from her. For not being there. They hurt. They _hurt_. But he just lets it all wash over him. Holds on to her and lets her tell the story.

She gets to a point where the words won't come anymore. She's blank and staring and exhausted, and he meets her there with his own words when the time is right. Beautiful words. Love and reverence and apology, but anger, too. His own share of blame and frustration. Indignation. The threads come together. Two sides meet in a story. Their story.

He stings and soothes and it's like he's coming to life—really coming to life again—right there beside her. He gets bold. Funny. Laughs at himself. Teases her. Plays with words, with phrases, with the twists and turns.

Something changes. Shifts. She's not really catching most of the substance of what he's saying any more, because he is suddenly on his game and she's carried away in it. Her skin is singing and her pulse is racing and it fills her up.

And _Oh, this is breaking the rules, isn't it?_ The thought arrives in Kate's head far too late. His tongue, his hands are deep into forbidden territory by the time she remembers that they're not supposed to be doing this. And why was that?

His teeth draw her attention sharply to one breast, then the other and the answer to that particular question ripples away on a plea for more. His, hers, or theirs. Does it really matter? His fingers drag heavy down her stomach, skip over to her hip and down her thigh and back up to center. The impatient arch of her hips against his hand seems to be an emphatic _No _in answer to that question.

"You're not getting away with anything, Castle." It sounds inane even to her own ears, but she knows her body's being a traitor even if she can't remember exactly why or how.

He laughs against her ribs. Makes a sudden move between her thighs and laughs again when she tenses, waiting for it. He just barely touches her. Just barely dips his finger against her. Just barely traces a circle. A line. An arc, back and forth. "Not getting away with anything. Wouldn't dream of it."

It's different. She's different. Languorous under his touch. Willing to follow. Let his hands go where they will. She's eager to meet them and . . . _fuck_ . . . so vocal. Not words. Not directions or demands, but these incredible sounds that drag along his spine.

It's so different that he's utterly surprised when his thumb brushes against her clit by accident—mostly by accident—and she arches off the bed. He's so enthralled that he stops entirely and watches. Listens.

He has no idea how he ends up on his back, but there he is and and there she is Over him, around him, pulling back and slamming her hips down. He grabs at her with a strangled cry that might be her name. Might be him begging. He slows her down. Slows them both down. Draws her lips to his and makes a new rhythm. She follows and it's so good.

And then she murmurs into his ear. "I love you. I love you."

Over and over and over and he's gone. He's gone.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Again with the angst!wimpery, right? My dears, I thought for a while that this would never end. That I would go to my grave still writing this. But it's done now, and I very much appreciate the reviews and encouragement and flailing. I hope you all like how it turned out.

* * *

It takes them a long while to come down. To disentangle. To stop coming back for one more soft kiss. Even when they fall back into his space, her space, they reach out to be sure of each other all over again. To make the most of the lingering sparks.

The autumn storm is still carrying on in its lazy, playful way. A little gold creeps in through the blinds, but it's soft and warm, and the wind still peppers the window pane with staccato phrases of rain.

Her fingertips tap a counter-rhythm against his chest. He's murmuring soft, silly things. She's ebbing away though. Floating off into sleep when she feels him shift. Feels him gearing up for something. "You don't have to be sorry, Castle."

"How did you know what I was going to say?" He sounds a little in awe. And a little put out.

"You do this thing. Your tongue against your teeth. Like you hate saying it and it tastes bad."

"It does. Like black licorice and sawdust." He laughs into her hair. "I am, though. Sorry. Sort of."

"For?" She gives him a sharp look.

He knows the right answer. He's pretty sure he knows the right answer. But Interrogation Beckett is back and no one can make him second guess himself like Interrogation Beckett.

"For . . . bending the rules." He looks serious, tentative.

"Bending?"

"Bending," he says more firmly. He draws in a breath and holds just for a second. Tilts his head to one side like he always does when he's making his case.

She pillows her cheek against her hand. This ought to be good

"_I _was just making out," he says loftily. "Making out is allowed. Making out is _bending._ _You're _the one who broke the rules with all your straddling and thrusting and taking advantage. And where did my pants even go? Didn't I have pants?"

"Taking advantage." She rolls her eyes. "_I_ was taking advantage."

"You were, Beckett," he says seriously.

She laughs and can't help but nudge him with her hips. Can't help but slide one leg between his and hook her toes around his calf. Can't help but love the way he breathes her in helplessly, even though she's pretty sure that neither of them could do much of anything right now if their lives depended on it.

"Tired?" she asks after a minute.

"No, I'm good," he replies, but his consonants are loose and sloppy.

"I am. So tired." She kisses his neck lazily in between words.

"Mmmm. Ok." He shimmies lower. Arranges her in his arms and settles his head on the pillow to give her more room. "If _you're _tired."

She hesitates. She wants this. She wants to nod off with him and wake up with him and get back to the serious business of spending the day in bed together. But she wants what comes after. She wants that more. She wants them to be in the habit of working at this.

The part of her that wants these things feels strong and solid and brave right now, because look what they've done. Look at all he's said and she's said and they're still here and look at them: Look at _them_. That part wants to speak.

But there's another part of her that whispers and warns. That part of her coils and snaps and hisses at her to keep her mouth shut. To take the fucking win right now. To not ruin everything. To give them both a moment's peace.

Neither part is right. Neither part is wrong. But in the end, she speaks.

"Tell me one more thing, though," she says. "One more hard thing."

"Kate." It's perfunctory. Not really an objection, not really a plea. He won't deny her anything, but he wishes she wouldn't ask. Wishes she could leave them be. Not for good. Just for now. Because he can still taste her on his tongue and feel her _I love you_s spinning away through every nerve ending, and he'd like to fall asleep to that feeling. To wake up to it in a little while. Just a little while.

"Ok," she agrees, but she's going again. "I'm sorry. Sleep now. We'll talk in a while." She's pulling away. Not . . . not like before, not nearly so bad, but bad enough.

He draws her back to him. She's shy and burning with embarrassment. He feels like a fool and a coward and he knows she deserves better. Knows he can be better.

"One more hard thing," he says as he ducks to look her in the eye. "You think . . . " He backtracks. He's not just being careful for his own sake. He's trying to be fair. "It seems like you think that being strong means being alone. That loving me makes you weak."

* * *

He does it. He actually falls asleep. And, yes, she told him to. Even in the dim glow of the bedside clock his skin looks grey, so she told him to. She wonders how bad the nightmares have been. Or if he's even had any. If he's even slept enough in the last week to have any.

She told him to sleep a while. That they'd both sleep a while.

But there's no chance of that for her. She stares up at the ceiling. Listens to the rain beat against the window, a melancholy warning now, not the pretty, seductive cadence that wrapped them tight together just a little while ago.

It's a shitty thing to say. A shitty thing to say when he knows—_he knows. _She's done things with him by her side that she could never have done alone. He knows that. She's said as much. Not often. Not as often as she should have, maybe, but it's not like he needs the ego boost, right?

She's _more_ with him, not less. That's the whole point. The whole fucking point of the risk and the pain and the loneliness. It's a shitty thing to say, and that's exactly what she'll tell him when he wakes up.

She slams her head savagely into the pillow and jerks herself over on to her side to face him.

His eyes are flickering open and closed. She goes rigid. Motionless. Holds her breath and wills him to still and settle. But he's awake and guilt flares through her, though it can't quite push aside the rest. He really does look like hell.

"No fair starting without me, Beckett." He sounds like hell, too.

She narrows her eyes at him. Half hopes that he'll drift back off and leave her alone until she finds equilibrium. Until she burns through the first white-hot edge of the anger. Until she can sift through the ashes and comb the scorched earth for what's left that's worth fighting about.

It works. Another thing Burke taught her, and sometimes it works. She lets the anger or worry or fear blaze all the way through her, wild and unchecked. Deals with what's left in the aftermath. If there's anything left. Sometimes—a lot of the time—there's nothing left. She goes through it and comes out lighter. Cleansed in fire.

It's something she should tell Castle. Something they should talk about. Another thing they should talk about. Abruptly she feels as tired as he looks, and she wonders, just for a second, if it's too late to coax him back to sleep.

But he's waiting. His face is slack and unfocused and unsuspecting, but he's waiting. No time for burning now.

She keeps it short. Tries to shove the anger, the irritation down deep. "You're awake."

_Well, so much for that._

"Generous," he mumbles. He reaches a heavy hand across and strokes her hip. "_You're_ awake."

She shrugs. Shrinks further on to her side of the bed. Pulls herself out of range.

"You're upset." He _is_ awake now. His voice is clearer, sharper. On alert, but every bit as exhausted as it was a minute ago.

She shrugs again. Hates herself for it. But she'll hate herself more if she lets out the ugly words uncoiling in her mind.

"Kate." He knows it's a mistake the second her name clears his lips. That note of aggravation. He knows it's unfair and unproductive and a laundry list of other _un-_ things, but he is _stupid _tired and he was in the middle of a _amazing_ dream starring her when all of a sudden it was like rebar and cinder blocks jolting around on her side of the bed.

"Go back to sleep, Castle," she says flatly and starts to roll out of bed.

He manages to make his heavy, awkward limbs work well enough to catch her, pin her in place. He swears he can feel the fury burning up her skin.

"I didn't say you _are_ weak," he says it fast, low, a millimeter from her face. And just as quickly, he moves off her. Shows her his hands in a gesture that makes it clear that he won't stop her if she's hell-bent on going.

She raises to a sitting position, then slams herself back down to the mattress again. Crosses her arms. Jams her fists into her armpits and grinds her teeth until something approximating words will come. "You wouldn't fucking dare."

"_Dare?_" He laughs. He was going for sarcastic, but there's a hysterical edge. He's so fucking _tired_. "Beckett, it wouldn't have _occurred_ to me to think you're weak. It wouldn't have occurred to anyone with even one foot in reality. Except for you."

"Except for me. _I_ think I'm weak?"

"You act like it," he snaps, then growls in frustration. It's not what he means. His thoughts are wedged tight and bulky and awkard in his brain and he really wishes they weren't having a high-difficulty conversation right now. "You _act_ like you're afraid of it. Like you get fucking bonus points for living alone."

"Living _alone_? I'm living with _you_. Do I get bonus points for that?"

They both go still and stone silent. Because she's _not _living with him, is she? She doesn't know where he keeps his t-shirts and he's always putting her dishes away in the wrong places.

And that's not how it would be if he had his way. Not how it would be if he hadn't been so damned careful all these months. Careful not to ask for too much. Careful not to overstep. They might not be living together, but how they are is a long way from how it would be if she didn't hold herself apart and he didn't let her.

"That's . . ." Her voice wavers. He reaches out and brushes a hand down her arm. Withdraws immediately. Like he knows she wants the reassurance and doesn't _want_ to want it. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Castle. That's a different issue. We can . . . we should talk about that. But not now."

He turns his face deeper into the shadows, but it's no good. He gets the feeling she can practically see the light reflecting off his big, goofy grin. There's nothing for it. He twists to face her. "But we can talk about it? We can talk about it. I'm holding you to that."

She wants to be irritated with him. His short attention span drives her nuts, and this is hard for her already, but it's _good_. It's good the way he lights up something old and innocent in her. Something undamaged that believes. That remembers how to believe.

"We can talk about it. But not now," she repeats sternly. She thinks it's stern, but he drops sweet, quick kisses on her lips, so probably not. "Castle!"

"Sorry. Sorry!" He retreats to his side of the bed, tucks the covers around him, and folds his hands demurely on his chest. "Continue."

She lets out a long breath. Frustrated, but a little giddy. It's hard not to be a little giddy. Impossible not to be with him lying next to her fairly radiating excitement. Hope.

She's still angry. Still hurt, and she still has to get this out, but she feels steadier for it. Surer.

"I love you, Castle," she says. She holds up a hand, prepared to ward off any interruption, but he's keeping to his own space for the moment. Smiling up at the ceiling. The picture of innocence. She goes on carefully. "My life is better with you. Happier with you. And there are things that . . . "

Her voice fails her. She tips her head back and looks for the words in the ceiling tiles. She feels him reach out his fingers and start to pull them back. She catches them and holds them loosely in her own.

"There are things that I don't think I would have found the courage to do without you . . . and I am grateful for that, whether I say it or not. But I have to be able to live without you. I can't just . . ."

"Do you think I can't live without you?" He tips his head toward her and gives her a curious look.

She should probably be annoyed at the interruption, but he's so matter of fact and inquisitive. There's no challenge or retort in it. It's like he's just realized something. He might have. To her the question feels so out of the blue. She suspects it shouldn't. She has a feeling it's something obvious. Something she should have thought about long before now.

He folds his arm under his head. Turns his whole body toward her and goes on. "Because I don't mean to wound your feminine pride, Beckett, but I can live without you."

"Castle." She _is _annoyed now. _Whose fucking turn is it anyway?_

He hears it. Sees it, but he goes on anyway. "No. Sorry. I know it's your turn, but I feel like we're talking past each other. This is not . . . _you _are not just some remedy for the Sunday Night Blues. I'm not with you just because I can't stand to be alone."

She's trying not to writhe, but she feels stupid. Like she's made more of herself than she should have. She just thought . . . _ugh._ She's not even sure_ what_ she thought when she hears his side of it and she wishes the bed would open up and swallow her whole.

But it's reassuring. He means it. It's not something he ever thought of saying, but he means it. And what the hell _did_ she think? He's walked away before. Made up his mind to live without her before. So what did she think? It's embarrassing and annoying that he's spelling it out now. Saying it in so many words. It makes her feel young and naive. She can't think what to say. Can't think what to say at all. But it's reassuring, too.

Appalling tears prick at the corners of her eyes_. _ He sees them. She knows he sees them, but he goes on, his voice warm and low, on and it's possible she's never been more grateful in her life for his endless supply of words. "I'm not . . . I'd rather not be alone. I like people around me. I like connecting. But, Kate, I'm in love with _you._ I want to be with _you. _I'm not just filling some void."

She's silent. Still silent. And it's probably well past time he was, too. It's her turn. He'll wait. He gives her fingers a squeeze and keeps hold of them. A long time goes by. It _feels_ like a long time to him, anyway. He sucks at waiting.

He's just on the verge of the other side of the story. Telling her that he had no idea what he was missing before her. That he was happy enough and skimming along on the surface with no idea—_no idea_—how much more there was. How much more he's capable of doing and feeling and wanting and having.

It's all about to spill out, even though he knows it's not the right time. All these things he wants to be free to tell her are just about to spill out, and she's still silent.

He breaks. "Beckett?"

"Yeah?" It's a whisper thick with the tears she's definitely not giving into. _God_ she feels like _such_ an idiot

"I have to kiss you now." His voice sounds reasonable enough to his own ears, even though he's back to being crazy nervous. He draws himself close and he's about to tell her. About to say that, yes, he _can_ live without her, but he never wants to. _Never_ wants to.

But she's already kissing him.

It goes on for a while, sweet and slow and dangerous. Innocent in a way. Lips and tongues and hands above the waist. Bodies only incidentally meeting and brushing, then breaking apart, heading for safer distances.

It's a game. Back and forth. Tugging one another to the edge and darting back from it. Both of them winding higher and higher. She feels a lazy, exquisite ache from head to toe and she grins wide against his cheek. Drops her lips to his ear and whispers, "_This_ is making out, Castle."

* * *

She wakes up starving. With her head propped on his collar bone, she can just see the clock. He drifted off first. She _thinks_ he drifted off first. All she really remembers is feeling lighter and lighter. His skin on her skin. Slow, soft, patient, like they have time. They have time.

They haven't been asleep long. Less than two hours, but she feels so much better. Except she's starving. She's trying to figure out the best way to extract herself from the bed without waking him when her stomach lets out a truly obscene growl. She claps her hands over it and her eyes dart to his face. He's still asleep. _Good. _

"Don't move, Beckett." His eyes are still closed, but his voice is clear. No trace of sleep. "Velociraptors can't see you if you don't move."

She slaps his chest lightly. "That was the _T. rex._ And it was wrong anyway."

"Well, we're dead now, so it hardly matters, does it?" He cracks open one eye.

"I'm sorry I woke you," she says as she examines his face. He looks better, too, though.

"Didn't. My stomach did." He peels the covers off himself. "I'll hunt."

"Hunt?" She rolls on to her belly and props her chin on her fists. Enjoys the view as he roams around trying to track down his pajama pants.

"I've already foraged today, woman. Do you doubt me?" He finally recovers the pants. Slides one leg in and does an awkward hop into the other.

"Hmmm . . . maybe you need backup," she laughs as he stumbles and falls back against the edge of the bed, the pants tangled around his knees.

"Safety in numbers," he agrees as he rights himself.

She throws back the covers and sucks in a breath as the air hits her skin.

"Still cold?" He throws open the closet and sticks his head in. "Got half a dozen robes. Shirts on the shelves." He holds one up by way of demonstration before sliding it on.

"I'll grab something," she says.

She looks a little shy and he gets lost for a while just taking in the sight of her. The gorgeous sight of her. She drapes her legs over the side of the bed and looks at him over her shoulder like she knows exactly what he's thinking.

He's thinking he'd better get out of this room right this second or they're both going to starve. "Yeah. Something. I'm . . . hunting. Right."

* * *

"I think we may have to hunt by phone," he says. He turns from the recesses of the refrigerator to face her as she climbs on to a barstool.

The thick navy robe swallows her up. Dangles halfway down her calves and far beyond her fingertips. He feels a pang of something. More than just lust, though that, too, of course. He loves her in his clothes. He loves her like this. Mussed and clean scrubbed. He loves her.

She rolls the wide sleeves back to her elbows and it's too much. He grabs her fingers and kisses the heel of her hand.

"Do we have to?" There's that shy look again.

"Have to?" he repeats dumbly. Starvation may be inevitable if she keeps looking at him like that.

She gestures to the phone. Bites her lip a moment and then the words come rushing out. "I don't want to let the world in yet."

He nods silently. Tries and fails to keep a truly stupid smile from spreading all over his face. "I'll find something."

She slides back off the stool and heads for the interior of the kitchen. Opens and closes cabinets. Takes in the lay of the land the way she does when she's made up her mind to something. He watches her out of the corner of his eye as he pretends to pick over a basket of questionable produce.

She finds the pantry and practically climbs in, tipping herself on to one foot to reach to something in the very back of a low shelf. She stutters back a few steps and turns to him with a triumphant look on her face, something clutched in each hand. "Victory!"

He shakes himself. It makes her cranky when he stares. When she decides to catch him staring. He plucks the items from her hands and his look turns skeptical. "I might be able to make this work."

"Might?"

"Jarred spaghetti sauce and a box of rigatoni that's been open for God knows how long?" He gives her a pitying look, sets the things down next to the stove top, and goes back to sorting through the basket.

"What's wrong with that?" She demands as she slides back around to the far side of the counter.

"I can't serve the love of my life jarred spaghetti sauce," he says absently as he comes up with a mostly intact bulb of garlic and a useable onion. He suddenly feels the weight of her stare on his back and belatedly registers his own words. He turns to look her in the eye and decides it's time to take a risk, "Oh, deal with it, Beckett."

* * *

He's frying the onions and garlic in pancetta that had somehow found its way into the freezer. She vetoes the dried mushrooms and adds the jarred sauce to the pan a little at a time. She stirs while he tends to prefabbed frozen dough. She's told him half a dozen times that it's fine. It's all more than fine. In fact it smells heavenly and not just because she'd kill for anything right now. Another handful of grapes. Even marshmallows.

She can tell he's about to ask again and she heads him off at the pass. It's time they talked about this anyway. Past time. "Your mother yelled at me."

"My mother? Yelled at _you_?" He cuts off the laugh that comes with the words almost immediately.

She watches him to make sure the death glare has taken effect. He looks pathetically contrite. She's still got it, so that's good at least. "When you . . . that's how I knew to come. To the ER."

"I guess the hospital called her?" He's suddenly nervous. Anxious to fill the empty air.

"No," she shakes her head. Tries to keep the hardness out of her voice. "Ryan."

He looks up at her sharply and then the garlic he's mincing suddenly seems to require all of his attention. _This could be bad._ "He called my mother?"

"Your mother. Not me." She jerks the spoon hard. Sauce splashes her fingers. "Damn it!"

"You ok?" He drops his knife and grabs for a towel.

"I'm fine," she snaps as she takes it from him. "Sorry. I'm fine."

He shrugs and turns to the refrigerator. He's on edge now. Seriously on edge. His mother. His mother and _Ryan. _Oh, this could be a disaster. He tamps down the urge for damage control. Gets the sense that this is a story she needs to put together for him. For herself.

She watches him. He's stalling for time. Fumbling around in the fridge and arguing with himself. She's half exasperated, half charmed at the way he's taking care of her. Letting her off the hook if she needs it. Letting her take this one in her own time. It makes her more exasperated. Guiltier. She stumbles on. "She said I don't deserve you. That I don't deserve the things you do for me."

He turns back to the cutting board and his hands falter for just a second. She watches him slide a hunk of butter into another pan and dump the garlic in after it.

"It's just garlic bread," he says without looking up.

She snorts and goes back to stirring the sauce. She's thinking about it. Thinking about how to say what comes next. Because it looks different now. From here. It all seems a lot more possible than it did 12 hours ago. There's a long way to go, but still. _Still._

She looks up at him then. Her eyes are bright and he's guessing that her chin isn't as steady as she'd like it to be, but she holds his gaze. "She said my life was falling apart and I hadn't even noticed. That you're the only thing keeping it together."

"Kate," he says when he can't just watch any more. But he stops. Has no idea what to say. It's maddening. His mother, God love her, is maddening. Because there's enough truth in it—enough resemblance to things he thinks they need to say to one another—that he can't just wave it all off as her amateur dramatics.

"You miss it," she says. Her voice is lower now. Definitely unsteady, but she's still taking things as close to head-on as she can manage. "The work."

He starts to say no, but that's not quite right. And they can't do this in half truths. He takes a breath. "I miss things about it. The challenge. People. Characters. Feeling like we made a difference. But that's not . . . it's such a small thing, Kate."

"Why did you do it, then?" Her eyes drop and the spoon shakes in her hand.

The smell of food suddenly turns his stomach. He can't stand being responsible for it. The thread of pain in her voice and the hurt in her eyes. He thinks back to her, pale and heartsick through the gap in the ER curtain. The dark smear of his blood on the hem of her shirt. He can't stand it, then or now. He wants to throw himself at her feet and beg her forgiveness. But there's time enough to make it about him later. Time enough.

"Have you talked to Ryan?" He asks when he has some voice to ask with.

She looks up. Surprised. Pissed. "Castle, I'm not asking why Ryan did it."

"And I'm not . . . well I _am_ avoiding the question," he admits. He busies himself assembling the garlic bread. Keeps the shaking of his own hands to a minimum with the work. "I didn't tell you about it because I'm an idiot and a coward and every time I think about how badly I fucked up again I completely lose it."

"That's not what I asked," she shoots back.

"I know. I know. But I wanted to say it, because I am sorry. I'm _so _sorry for doing that to you, Kate." He stops and looks up at her, but her face is stony. She wants her answer. So he gives it to her. "I did it because Ryan asked for help that I could give, and he's my friend. And because I feel guilty."

"Guilty?" She's not thrilled about the sulky undertone to her own voice. But at least she's not screaming. Or crying.

He slides the baking sheet with the bread into the oven and takes the spoon from her hand. "I'm . . . no. I'll . . . in a minute. I want to ask again. And I'm sorry that pisses you off. Have you talked to Ryan?"

"Not a good idea," she says and he believes it. Believes the hard angle of her jaw and the fury that sparks in her eyes.

"Ok," he says gently. "Ok. It's your decision."

"It is." Her knuckles are white on the edge of the counter.

He knows he's living dangerously. Knows it and feels a sharp surge of love for her. Attraction. Because this is them at their best—pushing, challenging one another, hammering through. And it's been a while. It's been a long while.

"Things are bad, Kate." He tries to keep it matter of fact, but his voice is a little ragged. It hurts and eats at him and he hasn't really allowed himself that. Not really. "Esposito's still barely talking to Ryan—barely talking to anyone. And Lanie's worried he's taking stupid risks. And this 'partner' Gates saddled Ryan with is worse than useless. . . . It's bad."

She doesn't flinch, but he sees it. Sees that instant of surprise. It's complete news to her, or near enough, and she doesn't know how to take it. She slides off the stool and grabs the empty pot sitting on the stove. She carries it over to the sink and leaves it to fill with water. She presses one hand on each side of the sink and lets her head fall forward.

He watches her. He watches her, but he stays put, even though her shoulders are shaking with anger and grief and God knows what.

"It's bad," she repeats. She slams her hand down on the faucet to stop the water and turns to face him. "And that's my fault? It's my job to fix it?"

He goes to her then. Slides his palms along either side of her jaw and kisses her. She doesn't resist and that scares him a little. More than a little.

"It is absolutely not your fault. And it's absolutely not your job," he says as he holds on to her and she lets him.

That scares him even more. He expected anger. He expected her to push back. He thinks maybe he's gone too far. That's he's fucked up again. Handled it wrong. That she doesn't feel that familiar spark. That she just thinks he's an asshole and a bully. But he doesn't see any way out but through. He steps back from her and she lets him do that, too. "But I thought you should know."

"I should know," she echoes. Her voice sounds far away. It feels far away. She feels far away. She thinks back to the night before. To falling into her first real sleep in days right here in his kitchen. To the feeling that she was coming back to herself. Into herself. And she realizes this—this sensation of distance from her own body, her own life, her own voice—didn't start with him leaving. Well, _fuck_.

She turns back to the sink and grabs the pot full of water. Walks it to the stove and lights the burner underneath. It doesn't buy her as much time as she'd like. She's still pretty much stuck on "Well, _fuck_." And he's watching her. Waiting and looking more than a little desperate. And the penny drops.

"Castle," she sighs and rakes a hand through her hair. "You don't think it's _your_ fault?"

But he does. It's written all over his face and it's so _backwards_ that she feels a hysterical laugh climbing up her sternum. She clamps it down. He looks so miserable. He _is. _So miserable about this. How has she not seen it before?

She stands in front of him. Leans a hip against the countertop and waits until he looks at her. "Castle?"

"It's not my _fault_," he says slowly. He feels stupid giving voice to it, but he doesn't think he's wrong. Not wrong exactly, anyway. "But I still feel guilty. I feel like . . . I get to have you and now they don't. Lanie, Esposito, Ryan. Even . . . even your father? They don't."

"I see them." She sounds defensive and wonders where the hell _that _came from. "We . . . spend time."

"But it's all so . . ." he gropes for the word. Speaks fast before the knot in his throat can catch up with him. Overtake him. Because he's got to get this out. "It's so _obligatory._ You see them. And you don't tell them anything and they don't tell you anything and you check it off your to-do list. And it's like . . . it's like if you need me more, you have to need them less or something. And . . . if it's a choice, I choose me. I want you to need me."

She closes her eyes and drops her head against her fist. And there she is, back around to "Well, _fuck"_ again, because Burke has tried to come at her a hundred ways about this. About rationing. About treating help and support and love like a finite quantity she has to be careful not to squander. Like a well she can't go to too often.

He's turned away from her, his own hips bumping the counter as he pokes halfheartedly at the sauce with the spoon. Fiddles with the pepper grinder and tries to get himself back under control.

She steps up behind him and slides her arms around his waist. Presses her cheek to his shoulder blade and listens to his heart. His kind, _kind_ heart. Sometimes . . . sometimes Martha's not the only one who thinks she doesn't deserve him.

"It's not a choice," she says. Firm. Not wavering anymore. "It shouldn't be a choice. I don't want it to be a choice."

* * *

He insists on doing it right, jarred sauce and all. Placemats, candles, wine, and china. And, of course, the dining room table. He hadn't budged an inch when she suggested they take it all back to the bedroom. Not even when she leaned forward and let the robe fall open just a little more. Something about being a gentleman, not a savage.

So here they are, crowded together at the short end of the dining room table eating what she swears is the best meal she's ever had. He looks dubious, but stopped openly contradicting her when she treated him to a choice moan and some exaggerated hip and shoulder action after her first forkful of the pasta.

They talk and don't talk. Sit together companionably and have those conversations, that back and forth, that makes his breath come quicker and her eyes shine with a challenge. An invitation.

It's easier. They're still raw and unsure. Still circling back to explanations and disclaimers and questions with more than a little hurt underneath. But there's a soft, solid grace to it all. It's quieter. It's easier.

Evening creeps in and then full dark. Neither of them misses the last of the light when it goes. The rain has let up, but the sky is still swollen with clouds. It keeps the city at a distance. Keeps them wrapped up in the private world of their day. Wrapped up in one another.

She's done with her plate. Feels full and round and finally warm. He's still picking at his and she's getting impatient. She steals a heel of bread from his plate and pops it in her mouth with a laugh. Maybe she wasn't quite full after all.

He's halfway through a half-hearted objection when she shoves his plate away and plucks the fork from his hand. And then she's sliding into his lap, the robe falls to either side of them to leave her hips, her thighs bare except for his hands. She lays her cheek against his shoulder and lets her lips drag lightly, back and forth, back and forth, over the stubble just underneath his jaw.

"Thank you, Castle," she murmurs. "This was good. All so good."

"You're welcome." He tilts his mouth downward, satisfied with a brief kiss in the general vicinity of her lips, then happy enough to let her carry on as she was. "But just so you know, in the retelling this will be a four-course meal with white-glove table service. Boeuf bourguignon for the main, I think. And chocolate soufflé."

"Retelling? Who're you retelling this to, Castle?"

"You never know. Conan. The royal family. Inevitable grandchildren. The gang." It's light and teasing, but his hands are a little heavier on her hips. A little more possessive.

She laughs. Rolls her head deeper into the crook of his neck and gives a warning nip. "No pushing, Castle," she whispers.

He runs one hand from the swell of her hip up the long arc of her body. Knocks the tie at her waist loose along the way. Slides both arms under the fabric and along the warmth of her skin. Brings them around her to hold her to him. "No pushing. But it would be nice."

"Nice," she repeats, but it's a mindless echo as her nipples drag over the fabric of his shirt and _oh_ his hips are moving. And so are hers. She slides her palms behind his shoulders and arches her back. Wants to cry out at the loss of the warmth of his chest against hers, but his hips are rising to meet hers and the friction between them is phenomenal.

He leans into her and finds her lips with his. Darts his tongue in and out of her mouth, presses soft kisses, wet, determined kisses here and there. Her chin, her cheeks, her eyelids and the hard corner of her jaw.

She anchors them together as he lets his hands roam over her. Strokes the small of her back, guides the slow undulation of her hips. Skates a palm, rough and sudden over her ribcage and finds one nipple, then the other with sharp, insistent tugs.

And then it's not slow. Then it's his name on a sharp inhalation and his hands scooping under her thighs and she's on her back on the table. She works her shoulders free of the robe with an annoyed mewl that isn't at all like her. He laughs, then of course, _of course_ gets tangled up trying to get his shirt off and now she's laughing and clawing at the waist of his pants with clumsy hands and muttering about candles and burning the place down.

He finally works the pants off his hips and down his legs and kicks them away. He slides his forearms along the table on either side of her and drags himself over every inch of her that he can get to. Drags his cheek over her thigh, her hip. Lavishes attention on her breasts. Long strokes of his tongue and small circles with his fingertips, his teeth sharp and demanding.

She's burning and eager, but he takes his time. Kisses her into more leisurely pace and she's happy to accommodate for a while. For a little while and then she's reaching for him. Wrapping her whole hand around him and dragging the length of him over her, front to back, tight circles against her clit.

Its so good. So good until it's too good. Her fingers tighten around him and she bucks against him. He makes a hungry sound. Grabs her wrist and slams it to the table at her side. Pushes into her and groans. Her spine peels off the table and she groans along with him. She works her hands free and curls her fingers over his hip bones. Moves with him, against him.

He tries to slow them down again, because _fuck_, she is tight, but before long, she'll have none of it. Her heels are drumming against the backs of his thighs and her lips are making sounds and motions that might mean more or faster or harder if he still recognized words, but he's long past that and, thank God, she seems to be, too.

He misses some time. Just a moment or two, but when he comes back to himself, he doesn't quite understand why she's breathing so hard and he jerks half off her, suddenly worried that he's crushing her, but she pulls him back and whispers into his mouth, "Stay, stay."

* * *

There's something wrong with a person who can think about the dishes after that. And, fine, she had a point about the candles and he's going to need a new set of placemats, but it is not humanly possible to take care of the dishes when his thighs have some harsh directorial notes on the wisdom of dining room table sex. _Maybe a new dining room table._

She manages at least to get things piled in the sink before she gives in. Lets him twine himself around her. Meanders back to the bedroom with him. Stops along the way on the back of the armchair, the end of the chaise for breathless, laughing conversations. Everything is funny all of a sudden. Everything has the blurry, hysterical edge of exhaustion. Satisfaction for the moment.

He's sprawling and inelegant, face down on the bed and she feels foolish pride in it. In the heaviness of his limbs. The indentation of his fist against the pillow. In his slow, even breaths. His eyes flick back and forth beneath his lids and her own eyes drift closed. He's dreaming. She did this. They did this together.

She startles awake some time later, ready for the nightmare. Ready to hold and soothe and talk him through it. But it's not that. He twists his body awkwardly. Mumbles into the pillow. He's half awake. It's not a nightmare.

"Castle?" She runs her palm lightly down the back of his neck, not sure what to do.

He lifts his head and opens his eyes to slits. She wants to laugh at how annoyed he looks. He grumbles a single word. "Hot!"

She smiles against his shoulder and reaches to peel the covers back from him. Arranges the sheet over his shoulders and folds the rest down and out of the way. He lets out a sigh of inexpressible contentment and his lips move in something that might be an I love you, but there's no sound.

"I love you." She says it for them both.

* * *

She panics a little when the light hits her skin. The blinds aren't quite flush with the window frame and there's suddenly a long shaft of brilliant gold falling across her side of the bed. It's late. It must be late.

She struggles to her elbows and squints at the clock. _6:45_. Late for her, but early for him. He's out. He's still out and she knows the slackness of his mouth, loll of his head on the pillow. He'll be out for a while yet.

She wants to go and she wants to stay. Does _not_ want to think about him waking up and having that moment of realization that she's not there. She feels the weight of all those moments before. When she told herself that it didn't matter. That when he got through one nightmare, he rarely had another and she was always there for those. And so. And so.

She feels that weight, but she needs to move. She feels like she's pushing against her own skin again. Like she's been curled up in a corner of her body and now she's stretching. Making things fit the way they're supposed to and she needs to move. She has work to do.

She thinks about waking him. It's not like he'll mind. Not for long. Her hands drift low, burrow under the sheets and hover just above the small of his back before she pulls back. No. He needs to sleep. And they need to be . . . normal. They need to start being the way they intend to go on. And she has work to do.

She cleans up the kitchen as best she can. She still doesn't know where a lot of things are and doesn't want to go banging around the cabinets. She makes coffee. Lingers with it. Wanders around looking at things. Really looking at things.

She stares at her phone and decides it's official. She's stalling. She makes a list. The last ditch effort of the procrastinator and she knows it, but she makes one anyway.

But the clock is crawling. It's only just late enough to set things in motion. Call Burke's office. Figure out when he can fit her in. When she has to have her thoughts together enough to know what to say to him. What to ask him for, other than help with what's next. With Lanie and Ryan and Esposito. With Martha and her father. With life. There's a lot to do.

She fishes her clothes out from behind the couch and makes a face. She doesn't relish the idea of struggling back into them. Finding some remedy for the bent zipper on her jeans, the button hanging on by a thread. She does it anyway. Pulls the jeans on and decides that it'll work well enough if she knots his long t-shirt over her hip. Her own shirt is pretty much a total loss. The sleeve is ripped where it caught on her thumb and the neck is too stretched out to be any good to anyone.

She's dressed or something like it, but she feels exposed. Unsure. She thinks about stripping down again and breaking her resolution. She thinks about waking him up.

But her phone rings then, and Burke can fit her in this morning. Just a couple of hours from now and she's not putting it off. She has a moment—another moment—when she thinks about leaving him to wake up alone, but she doesn't dwell.

She has an idea. She has it with her. Has had it with her for weeks at least. Maybe more. And whether or not it's been the right time for a while, it's the right time now. She knows what she wants to do.

* * *

He feels fantastic when he wakes up. It's disorienting. He is _not _a morning person, but he feels fantastic. Not even the sun pricking at his eyelids can make a dent in it. Well, not much of a dent, because _ow_.

He considers throwing something at the blinds to knock them back into place, but it feels like too much effort. Way too much effort. He settles for turning his head the other direction and squinting at the clock. _Oh_. It's late. _Really _late and there's no way that Kate . . .

He rolls back over and his heart drops. He reaches out a hand and the sheets are cold. It drops again. Further. But then his fingers brush over something. An envelope with his name on it. He feels a sick rush. Tells himself she wouldn't, she wouldn't. Not after everything.

He works at the seal with shaking hands. The movement calms him somehow. His fingers are telling him things. About the weight of the paper. It's his stationery. Heavy. Expensive, though he hasn't written an actual letter in years. He loves paper. She must have gone looking for it. Even he can't think where she might have found it, and she wouldn't have gone looking for something like that—for the right thing—just to break his heart. Right?

He finally works the flap free and fishes out the folded oblong. It catches on something and he notes absently as the envelope falls from his hand that it's heavy. At first they're not words. At first it's art. She has gorgeous handwriting, he thinks stupidly. He runs his thumb over its strong, elegant lines and the fear falls away. She wouldn't. He believes that.

He yawns and falls back against the pillows. Brings the note close to his face and uses it as a shade from the terrible sun. Has another stupid, affectionate moment of love for her when her writing lights up gold from behind.

It's short. Brief phrases, bold periods and the sweep of her name at the bottom. No "love," just an X and O. He pictures her hesitating, pen hovering. One of his fountain pens. He can tell by the way the ink pools and spreads out from the bold crosses of her Ts. She must have looked for that, too.

He stretches and blinks a few times, finally feels up to the supreme effort of making sense of the words.

* * *

_Morning Castle: _

_Sorry I couldn't wait __forever_ _for you to wake up. Work to do. There's coffee. Might even still be warm by the time you roll out of bed. _

_My place later? Dinner in. Nothing jarred. _

_Let yourself in. _

_XO, _

_Beckett_

* * *

He stares at the last sentence. Remembers the heavy corner of the envelope dropping out of his hand. His heart beats fast, irregular against his ribs. He fumbles at the envelope. Curses under his breath then smiles. A single key tips out and comes to rest in the palm of his hand.


End file.
